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Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

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Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#121

There will be a day when all apps on a mac will only be installable from the app store. Developers will be forced to buy macs and subscribe to Apple’s developer program to support it. Customers will be trained to not care. And HN Apple fanboys and fangirls will try to justify why this is a Good Thing(TM).

This take is stale. Some people will pay for less freedom on their machines and some developers will gladly take their money. That’s not force, that’s capitalism.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand why anyone would send data in clear text anymore, let alone Apple.

It's explained in the article, there's a loop if you want to verify a certificate and you need the certificate to verify the certificate

Check server certificate OCSP first, send subsequent queries via SSL.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#123

There will be a day when all apps on a mac will only be installable from the app store. Developers will be forced to buy macs and subscribe to Apple’s developer program to support it. Customers will be trained to not care. And HN Apple fanboys and fangirls will try to justify why this is a Good Thing(TM).

We’ve been hearing that for years, yet it hasn’t happened. Apple seems to recognize the value of the Mac as an general computing platform.

They’ll never do it.

They just keep making stuff not private so you have to choose between security versus privacy.

A well thought system would be able to provide both.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They backup the private key to iCloud unless you manually disable backups. So even though iMessage is advertised as E2E encrypted, for the vast majority of users, Apple can read each and every message. (And even if you disable backups, Apple can still read most if not all of your messages, because the persons on the other side of the conversations have not disabled backups)

Can Apple read your iCloud storage? I’m not saying that it is, but shouldn’t that be encrypted at rest with a customer-specific key?

I don't have any detailed knowledge of it, but I've seen various similar comments based on this article and similar ones:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#125
post #110
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there were aspects of PRISM that required cooperation from providers like Google. Like the NSA would send queries to them and they would return emails or what have you that match those queries. Though of course this “cooperation” is required by law.

If there's a court order, (FISA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla... , or otherwise) companies have to comply. So I don't really see how one can blame a any company for that.

You can absolutely blame companies, specifically Apple, because many things are not E2EE when they could be.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#126

While other posts on this topic are too alarmist, this one is way too Apple apologetic for my taste. * There is no information on how often the validation happens. All this investigation concludes is that it doesn't happen when closing and immediately re-opening an app. Is it every week? Every reboot? Every hour? If it's less, that's essentially the same as doing it on every launch. * There is no justification for se…

> I don't follow the "browsers and loops" argument. To log in to my banking account, I need the correct password. No problem, I keep it in a password manager. To open the password manager, I need the correct password. No problem, I keep it in a password manager. To open the password manager, I need the correct password. No problem, I keep it in a password manager. To open the password manager, I need the correct pass…

But there’s an easy fix. I use it with my password manager. To log in to my bank account, I need the correct password. No problem, I keep it in a password manager. To open the password manager, I need the correct password. No problem, I already know it. If I don’t know it, I look it up from a less secure source.

Technically what I’m describing is that you can vary the behaviour of OCSP lookups such that if you’re already looking up an OCSP certificate to establish an SSL connection to an OCSP server, downgrade and check over HTTP only when trying to connect to the OCSP server itself. Yes, it would mean one more TLS connection to a random server. Yes, it would mean an extra OCSP lookup. But just one, and just for the OCSP server itself. Which means privacy is preserved in regards to which developer certificate you’re checking. It would be only checking Apple’s OCSP server certificate in the clear, which it could equally cache easily.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#128
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's explained in the article, there's a loop if you want to verify a certificate and you need the certificate to verify the certificate

Check server certificate OCSP first, send subsequent queries via SSL.

Precisely. This would require more work, but it would only leak the OCSP server’s revocation request, and would make OCSP both more secure (caching OCSP server validity rather than the original certificates) and more private (due to SSL).

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#129

While other posts on this topic are too alarmist, this one is way too Apple apologetic for my taste. * There is no information on how often the validation happens. All this investigation concludes is that it doesn't happen when closing and immediately re-opening an app. Is it every week? Every reboot? Every hour? If it's less, that's essentially the same as doing it on every launch. * There is no justification for se…

Isn’t OCSP an open standard for handling certificate revocations? The standard specifies plaintext, because the standard can’t assume that the client has a way to form an encrypted connection to the revocation list.

Why is Apple limited bu Open Standards? It's not like any other servers are going to be receiving these messages.

Re: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look

#130
post #127

Apple has always been a gated community, but now there’s a guard at the gate checking everything that goes in and out. This is something most users probably don’t want. It has me personally considering what a future without Apple would look like.

It's literally called Gatekeeper lol
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