Apple's iCloud+ “VPN” • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#351

Post by o8r3oFTZPE » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:16 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #341

marshray wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more nodes you have participating the more secure an onion system tends to be. Since the Tor network can carry most kinds of traffic, the motivation to avoid a fork is strong.

> The more nodes you have participating the more secure an onion system tends to be. Tor isn't very large as it is, and (I would guess) it's the largest. If another onion routing network didn't grow the audience, you would have two even smaller networks. > the Tor network can carry most kinds of traffic Isn't Tor limited to routing TCP? That would rule out QUIC, for example.

Maybe could chain the networks together. An exit node on one onion routing network might automatically send traffic to another onion routing network.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#352

Post by ezfe » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:20 AM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #308

vngzs wrote: post #255

From Apple's statement[0]: > The first assigns the user an anonymous IP address that maps to their region but not their actual location. The second decrypts the web address they want to visit and forwards them to their destination. This separation of information protects the user’s privacy because no single entity can identify both who a user is and which sites they visit. Apple is not saying nobody can deanonymize y…

That makes me wonder whether an analysis could be done over a long period of time to determine where in the region the user isn't, and thereby narrow down where the user is.

Presumably they're not actually blocking the current location - just not using it to inform their selection.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#353

Post by ezfe » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:22 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #349

So I seem to be completely missing... what is this actually for ? What's the value proposition for the average consumer? It doesn't replace a VPN into your company's or university's network (for accessing private resources). It's not for accessing streaming TV in different regions. HTTPS is already secure. In theory it seems like it could be used for illegal torrent downloading, but given that Apple is in the media b…

It provides VPN-style protection against your ISP and does also protect you against IP address tracking. This means you and people in your household have one fewer data point that links you.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#354

Post by ezfe » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:24 AM UTC

pilif wrote: post #3

My experience with this so far was... mixed. - This breaks DNS resolution for company-internal domains. - This routes all my traffic through CloudFlare or another CDN I might or might not trust (yes, the IP is hidden, but not the data) - it significantly slows down my internet access on my location. - it tends to turn itself on again without my intervention especially the last point is very problematic for me

> it tends to turn itself on again without my intervention

This is listed as a known issue in the release notes

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#355

Post by LonesomeGeorge » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

Does it mean iOS devices in China can go across GFW with Apple's VPN?

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#356

Post by grouphugs » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:39 AM UTC

no

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#357

Post by sillysaurusx » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #198

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...who names their company "OpSec"? Are they actively wanting to be made fun-of at the next defcon?

Is anything worse than "Web Sheriff"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Sheriff https://web.archive.org/web/20090122235038/https://thepirate...

The emails between pirate bay and web sheriff are pretty funny.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090105141217/http://static.the...

> We shall look forward to hearing from you.

We look forward to receiving more of your so exquisitely designed HTML e-mails with the shiny wanna-be-police-star.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081221100050/http://static.the...

> Dear Frederik,

>

> Hello.

Hi! Please, learn to quote properly in your e-mail messages. You can learn from how I do - I promise you that proper quoting is not patented.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#358

Post by mung » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #254

headmelted wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your prediction of it being called Apple Undercover is significantly more 80’s though. And I like it. So much so that I would accept Apple using something other than Helvetica this one time for a Miami Vice typeface and a Michael Knight and Kitt intro at WWDC. I cannot stress enough that Hasselhoff needs to stay in character the entire time or the whole concept doesn’t work.

Hasselhoff drifts on to stage in KITT, jumps out, and tackles Tim Cook. They then get up, shake, laugh, and take turns explaining how iCloud+ VPN makes it look like everything you do online comes from Apple.

KITT & Siri start flirting.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#359

Post by alam2000 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

defaultname wrote: post #230

dividuum wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. I guess it wasn't really obvious from the linked mail. The introduction video at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10096/ is a lot clearer.

Not sure why you said correct, as it's both. A big part of private relay -- I would say the most significant part -- is to allow people to talk to websites without giving up their personal IP (and from that pretty tight geolocation, and with fingerprinting a correlation with loads of other data they collect). Apple makes a big deal about it being about maintaining privacy, not just against snooping of traffic -- whic…

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#360

Post by ev1 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #278

tialaramex wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not about privacy though, the insight needed (not that I'm saying it was easy to make this particular prediction) is that Apple is all about the Walled Garden. It can't be Tor because Apple doesn't own Tor, and so that's not inside the Walled Garden, whereas "Apple Undercover" even if it were functionally no better or worse than Tor, is magically blessed by the Apple branding. And Apple have been all abou…

Tor has reputation problems. Lots of services block tor exit nodes because of all the abuse that comes from them. By making it a feature for paying subscribers only, Apple probably hopes that their solution won't be interesting for criminals. (Apple will likely cooperate with law enforcement)

Using Tor would be an insane choice for 99% of Apple users.

"Oh, let me turn on undercover... why is my bank online account suspended and my PayPal banned?"