Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#41

Post by kalleboo »

hedora wrote: post #39
kalleboo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't spread lies. > They are the other end where the traffic is decrypted Only for certain types of data, with certain settings. That does not include the keychain. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 > And yes they can see your stuff. We know this because law enforcement gets access to it all the time. What law enforcement typically gets access to is iCloud Backups, which is not end-to-end encrypted by de…

Your link (Dec 14, 2023) says they E2E encrypt it and do not store escrow keys, but this link (May 13, 2022) says they store escrow keys for keychain: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/secure-icloud-keych... Did they announce this change? It's a pretty major UI departure. In particular, if you have one Apple device and loose it, the 2022 article implies you can recover your keychain, but the 2023 article says…

The platform security guide PDF (May 2022) on the page you linked is a lot more detailed and explains it better https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-sec...

The escrow is only an additional layer of security - your device still has to decrypt the downloaded keychain contents using your password AFTER proving to escrow that you're allowed to download the encrypted keychain using device or SMS 2FA or an iCloud security code.

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#42

Post by tholdem »

chrisandchris wrote: post #40
tholdem wrote: post #38

Imagine being in China and finding this out after an update. I used an iPhone a few years ago and when setting it up, I made sure to turn off all iCloud stuff. When it was time to get a new phone, I noticed all my pictures were in iCloud. I also did not like how hard it was to try and keep Bluetooth and Wifi turned off. Regularly it would nag me to connect to an open Wifi when I was sure I switched Wifi off completel…

> Also, it's good practice to reboot your phone one in a while, so why isn't there a reboot option in iOS? Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of rebooting your phone? I disn't do it for a couple of months and I don't see what gets "better". Besides, turning it off and on again will reboot it too. Just slighty more inconvienent :)

Modern smartphone security relies on verified boot which cryptographically verifies various components in the boot process all the way to the kernel and beyond to make sure they have not been tampered with. This not only protects against physical attack vectors, but also remote as it can detect and prevent malicious modifications to the firmware and OS.

For example, this makes malware persistence much more difficult, as verified boot checks for integrity at every boot and reverses any unsigned changes.

Persistence on iOS and Android is very difficult. As an example, at least on iOS, threat actors have sometimes failed to achieve persistence, so they hijack the shutdown process and simply fake shutdown by animating the shutdown flow. The user thinks they've shut down the phone, but in reality the device was never shut down and never went through the verified boot process. However, since Steve Jobs decided iOS never needs a manual reboot, gaining persistence may not even be necessary, because people don't reboot their iPhones.

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#43

Post by chrisandchris »

tholdem wrote: post #42
chrisandchris wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it's good practice to reboot your phone one in a while, so why isn't there a reboot option in iOS? Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of rebooting your phone? I disn't do it for a couple of months and I don't see what gets "better". Besides, turning it off and on again will reboot it too. Just slighty more inconvienent :)

Modern smartphone security relies on verified boot which cryptographically verifies various components in the boot process all the way to the kernel and beyond to make sure they have not been tampered with. This not only protects against physical attack vectors, but also remote as it can detect and prevent malicious modifications to the firmware and OS. For example, this makes malware persistence much more difficult,…

Doesn't that contradict itself? If the attacker fakes the shutdown process (and/or the reboot process), how does a shutdown or reboot help if the process never actually happens?

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#44

Post by tholdem »

chrisandchris wrote: post #43
tholdem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern smartphone security relies on verified boot which cryptographically verifies various components in the boot process all the way to the kernel and beyond to make sure they have not been tampered with. This not only protects against physical attack vectors, but also remote as it can detect and prevent malicious modifications to the firmware and OS. For example, this makes malware persistence much more difficult,…

Doesn't that contradict itself? If the attacker fakes the shutdown process (and/or the reboot process), how does a shutdown or reboot help if the process never actually happens?

Sorry my reply was poorly written. Like with anything, there will be vulnerabilities and techniques that allow for verified boot bypass, which most are not trivial and which need to be fixed, but that does not mean verified boot isn't valuable and working. It means extra cost and work for threat actors and the example was just how it was once done, by not attacking verified boot, but the process before it. Maybe because true persistence was too hard to achieve at the moment, thanks to properly implemented verified boot.

Once the battery runs out completely, then you can be sure verified boot is helping you out. I'm sure there are now other mechanisms that fixed the example of faking the boot process I wrote about earlier.

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#45

Post by hulitu »

tholdem wrote: post #38

Imagine being in China and finding this out after an update. I used an iPhone a few years ago and when setting it up, I made sure to turn off all iCloud stuff. When it was time to get a new phone, I noticed all my pictures were in iCloud. I also did not like how hard it was to try and keep Bluetooth and Wifi turned off. Regularly it would nag me to connect to an open Wifi when I was sure I switched Wifi off completel…

> Imagine being in China and finding this out after an update.

Or in the US. Apple and Uncle Sam wants your passwords.

Re: Tell HN: iCloud Password Sync turns on by itself on iOS 17

#46

Post by tholdem »

hulitu wrote: post #45
tholdem wrote: post #38

Imagine being in China and finding this out after an update. I used an iPhone a few years ago and when setting it up, I made sure to turn off all iCloud stuff. When it was time to get a new phone, I noticed all my pictures were in iCloud. I also did not like how hard it was to try and keep Bluetooth and Wifi turned off. Regularly it would nag me to connect to an open Wifi when I was sure I switched Wifi off completel…

> Imagine being in China and finding this out after an update. Or in the US. Apple and Uncle Sam wants your passwords.

I mentioned China because there Apple's e2e encryption does not apply.
Post reply on HN