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Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

reuters.com

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Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#321

Post by brigade »

GeekyBear wrote: post #207

>there's no good and easy option to backup your phone other than iCloud. Turn off iCloud and do local encrypted backups to your PC or Mac. This works over your wifi network (if you prefer wireless charging at home) or via a cable connection.

It's also flakey as hell (just looked and my latest backup is over 3 weeks old), and relies on having a computer plugged into power at the same time as your iPhone, with enough free space.

I've tried getting my family to use it (mainly because they didn't want to pay for iCloud storage), before giving up and just paying their storage for them.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#322

Post by novok »

6ak74rfy wrote: post #211
rsync wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look into the 'borg' backup tool - it has become the de facto standard for remote backups because it does everything that rsync does (efficient, changes only backups) but also produces strongly encrypted remote backup sets that only you have a key to ... your cloud provider has no access to the data. The borg website is here: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ and a good description of how it wor…

After looking at a few alternatives (Borg, Duplicacy etc.), I setup Arq on my Mac yesterday. One thing that irks me about these solutions is that they seem to scan my folders each time they want to backup. Are there tools that are smarter about this? For e.g., while running, they could keep a log of what's changing and only scan those while backing up.

You would probably need the kernel / filesystem to keep track of it to keep it efficient. And even then that is iffy if you implement it as a kernel extension vs. something integrated into filesystem code.

I've found arq backup overall slow once you start hitting 0.5TB overall. It's a design issue.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#323

Post by mistersquid »

justapassenger wrote: post #191

Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, about how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, how they're going to stand for the user, fight with governments, etc. While iPhone itself is pretty secure as a device phone (and Apple makes sure to remind you about that in each ad, public speaking, attacks on competitors, etc), as an ecosystem it's not secure. And it's like that on purpose - there's no…

> Wonder if this will help to kill a meme, aboyt how much Apple cares about users and what great values they have, how they're going to stand for the user, fight with governments, etc.

In this instance, Apple decided to continue to not encrypt iCloud backups because, according to one source,

> […] the company did not want to risk being attacked by public officials for protecting criminals, sued for moving previously accessible data out of reach of government agencies or used as an excuse for new legislation against encryption. [0]

Apple's stance on privacy is more than mere marketing and more than a meme, but their legal team decided that encrypting formerly unencrypted backups, which had already been used as evidence in previous cases, is ill-advised.

Most people, including technically knowledgable users here on HN, were unaware iCloud backups have always been unencrypted. Many of us concerned about privacy have avoided iCloud backups because they are subject to subpoena.

I wish Apple would (have) offered encrypted iCloud backup as an option, and I understand why they chose not to. However, I disagree that their stance on privacy is mere marketing. Apple has a balance to strike between the issues of encryption, privacy, and law enforcement, and their products are not perfect for either users or law enforcement.

That doesn't mean Apple doesn't care about its users and their privacy.

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

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#324

Post by brigade »

shawnz wrote: post #280
djannzjkzxn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this backup encrypted with? If I lose my phone, what do I need to restore it to a new phone?

It's encrypted with a password you type on the computer, but is stored on the phone. Annoyingly, if you lose the password, the only way to change it (even just for future backups) is resetting all settings on the phone.

This has changed - now you can change the password for new backups with the iPhone passcode.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#325

Post by [deleted] »

Shank wrote: post #288
skrowl wrote: post #265

For comparison, Google end-to-end encrypts Android backups with your lock screen PIN/pattern (which isn't known to Google). Source - https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...

Offline attacks for a motivated adversary, like NSA, are trivial on low strength security measures, like a standard PIN, numeric only PIN, or pattern. Only a strong passphrase would really help you.

[deleted]

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#326

Post by magduf »

GeekyBear wrote: post #256
jayd16 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in run an OSX vm so you can run a backup? You're only allowed to virtualize OSX on Apple hardware.

You you have always been able to back up your iDevice to a Windows instance, if that is what you prefer to use.

You want me to pay for a Windows license to run a Windows VM on Linux, all just so I can back up an iPhone? I don't have to do any of this crap with an Android phone.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#327

Post by shadowgovt »

EGreg wrote: post #264
shadowgovt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for all governments, but in the US the National Archives has responsibility for recording the things the federal government undertakes on behalf of the people. This includes even the tapes Nixon made of his own conversations as President. The guiding principle the US government operates on in this context is "When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property" (Thomas Jeffers…

It’s only a matter of time before easy-to-use open source technology becomes available to everyone to host and they won’t need Apple to manage their data. Unless you mean Apple should be actively trying to siphon off private data via their OS and hardware and index it for the feds? I would then say Apple’s “trusted computing base” isn’t so trusted.

> It’s only a matter of time before easy-to-use open source technology becomes available to everyone

I believe people have been saying that to me for thirty years now, but I'm younger than my peers. ;)

In the context of cloud services specifically, I think that's even less true than in the OS space. Half the benefit of clouds is someone else is maintaining the infrastructure, the backups, the ubiquitous connectivity, etc. None of those are trivial to handle as a solo project, and attempts to make them easier compete with free (as in time).

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#328

Post by zaarn »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #269
zaarn wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the hardware supply chain can ever be secured. Even if you were to open-source every single part of manufacturing, there is no reliable way to ensure that the chip you, as a customer, have obtained, hasn't been backdoored. You'd have to delid it and put it under an X-Ray if that even resolves the tiny featuresin modern CPUs.

With an open hardware design, periodically de-liding and examining a random sample of available consumer hardware would probably sufficient to protect the general consumer population, and targeted attacks become very difficult if you purchase your hardware from a store rather than order it by mail. Even so I agree that examining all hardware in that manner is impractical. A better approach might be having a small, si…

>With an open hardware design, periodically de-liding and examining a random sample of available consumer hardware would probably sufficient to protect the general consumer population, and targeted attacks become very difficult if you purchase your hardware from a store rather than order it by mail.

How do you trust the person that verifies the CPU? Can you trust the X-Ray imaging machine? Is the X-Ray Machine verified to be open source and not backdoored to hide backdoors (aka bootstrapping trust).

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#329

Post by modeless »

Shank wrote: post #288
skrowl wrote: post #265

For comparison, Google end-to-end encrypts Android backups with your lock screen PIN/pattern (which isn't known to Google). Source - https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...

Offline attacks for a motivated adversary, like NSA, are trivial on low strength security measures, like a standard PIN, numeric only PIN, or pattern. Only a strong passphrase would really help you.

This is false. This concern is addressed in the second paragraph of the linked article:

> this passcode-protected key material is encrypted to a Titan security chip on our datacenter floor. The Titan chip is configured to only release the backup decryption key when presented with a correct claim derived from the user's passcode. Because the Titan chip must authorize every access to the decryption key, it can permanently block access after too many incorrect attempts at guessing the user’s passcode, thus mitigating brute force attacks. The limited number of incorrect attempts is strictly enforced by a custom Titan firmware that cannot be updated without erasing the contents of the chip. By design, this means that no one (including Google) can access a user's backed-up application data without specifically knowing their passcode.

Re: Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained

#330

Post by overcast »

novok wrote: post #305
overcast wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because syncing isn't a backup? What happens when you sync corrupted files? Same reason RAID isn't a backup, yet that one continues to crop up.

iPhone backups are only one snapshot and done semi-frequently so unless you notice the corruption very quickly, it's going to 'backup' that corruption too.

Right, so do real backups of your data. iCloud is loss recovery, and multi device convenience.
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