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C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

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21–30 of 153 posts

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#21
post #8

I'm very surprised Google put in so much effort to implement an approach that is basically the equivalent of client-side verification of passwords. Did no one designing it mention that it could be defeated by any rooted device?

Actually I think this approach is very forward looking! Attestation is on the cusp of becoming a very powerful technique. We just need to figure out how to build 100% bug-free and 100% secure hardware and software, and then it's gonna work great.

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#24

Even at the hardware level, if it was a separate chip that the camera data passed through or something, that's not really good enough either, people have broken TPMs before. It'd have to be baked into the camera sensor. Even then, you could attack it from the next level up, with some fancy optics and a display, or something like that. I don't think completely solving this sort of problem is even possible.

And I'm not sure it's even useful to solve. The presence/absence of a digital signature will never be the deciding factor in whether people accept/reject an image as authentic.

Yeah this is what I don't get why are people even spending time on this.

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#25
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm not sure it's even useful to solve. The presence/absence of a digital signature will never be the deciding factor in whether people accept/reject an image as authentic.

Yeah this is what I don't get why are people even spending time on this.

A desperate attempt to preempt regulation.

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#26
post #25
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is what I don't get why are people even spending time on this.

A desperate attempt to preempt regulation.

A desperate attempt to establish their version of regulatory capture and not have to pay licensing fees to the other guy

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#27
post #8

I'm very surprised Google put in so much effort to implement an approach that is basically the equivalent of client-side verification of passwords. Did no one designing it mention that it could be defeated by any rooted device?

Well, all one has to do is look at the bigger picture of how rooted devices are being shuffled into 3rd rate/totally blocked experiences and the overall direction of things starts to take very clear shape.

At over a decade old, still prescient as ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#28

Even at the hardware level, if it was a separate chip that the camera data passed through or something, that's not really good enough either, people have broken TPMs before. It'd have to be baked into the camera sensor. Even then, you could attack it from the next level up, with some fancy optics and a display, or something like that. I don't think completely solving this sort of problem is even possible.

And in 2026, I don't think it's too big of a stretch to imagine that there are going to be people in power that can add + remove the metadata to whatever image they want, at will, to tell whatever story they want to create. Sadly.

There were similar fears about the webtrust CA system, but AFAIK there's no known incidents where a government strongarmed a CA into misissuing a MITM certificate, and then it was used in MITM attacks. The closest is some misissued certificates seemingly due to incompetence but weren't used in attacks.

Re: C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

#29
post #11
post #7

I have a feeling Apple is going to knock it out of the park on this when they get around to it. They have a great foundation for doing image provenance well. The device attestation workflows are already there. And the same attacks that work against Android won't be as easy or effective because of Secure Enclave. Apple could run the whole signing process inside SEP. And, Apple could choose to integrate a LiDAR depth m…

Apple isn’t going to touch this with a 10-foot pole. The provenance “proof” these approaches provide is very tenuous and nowhere near the “this is a real photo of a real world event taken by a real camera and not an AI image” proof that marketing types like to push. Apple doesn’t want a PR disaster where some crazy image is totally fake but becomes world news because it is “cryptographically signed as being from a re…

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