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Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#91

Post by coldtea »

piyush_soni wrote: post #61
nostromo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they took on the FBI I decided that it was more than just vacuous PR. A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist. It took real cojones for Apple to stand up for privacy at such a time.

I supported Apple's stand against the FBI, but believing it's purely altruistic would be simplistic and optimistic thinking at best. When safety and security are your perceived selling point, it's the best PR you can have. I'm not entirely sure about the validity of this nytimes article [1], but if we believe it, Tim Cook had asked FBI to submit their request 'in private' - but FBI did it openly, so Tim Cook 'had to'…

>I supported Apple's stand against the FBI, but believing it's purely altruistic would be simplistic and optimistic thinking at best. When safety and security are your perceived selling point

Only safety and security weren't Apple's "perceived selling points".

They were mostly touted for user friendliness, it just works, being the first to bring some technologies to market in a well-thought way (e.g. as opposed to crude crap for early adopters), style, high-end ("luxury") items, etc.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#92

Post by coldtea »

andyjdavis wrote: post #55
nostromo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they took on the FBI I decided that it was more than just vacuous PR. A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist. It took real cojones for Apple to stand up for privacy at such a time.

>A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist Not if they were any good at their job. Very publicly standing up against what many would see as heavy handed government and being seen to defend the rights of the little guy (who happen to be their customers and potential customers) got them an enormous amount of very positive press not just in the US but in many countries. It would…

>Not if they were any good at their job.

That's close to the "No true scotchman" fallacy though.

Truth is, most PR persons in real life would not have gone this far against FBI in such a situation. Even if the "standing up" gave them some positive press, there would still be millions of conservative types giving them hell for not helping catch the bad guys.

In fact even progressives is not a given that they'd have applauded. Imagine if the FBI next asks Apple to help them with the phone of a rape/murder suspect, or the guy at Orlando.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#94

Post by TickleSteve »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #34
School-Cotton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that. But who knows how much secret sauce they have in the iOS build? Also, even on OS X, it takes a while after new versions of the OS are released for new kernel source bundles to drop. So sometimes poking around with IDA is your only recourse.

A non-trivial amount of the iOS platform has been rev-eng'd (incidentally, largely with IDA and those kernel sources to create binaries with intact symbols + binary comparison heuristics[1]). XNU is largely based on FreeBSD so I'd be surprised if that wasn't an additional vehicle people were using (In a similar vein, fail0verflow used the syscode table information from FreeBSD with WebKit and ROPgadgets to fully comp…

XNU != BSD.

XNU == MACH + BSD Personality.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#95

Post by TickleSteve »

crypty wrote: post #77
evgen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company that Facebook acquired a couple of years ago (PrivateCore) realized that the L1 cache had grown large enough that you could run a hypervisor out of it. You use a TPM secure boot chain to ensure you are booting the code you need into the hardware you expect, load up the hypervisor and its keys, and then this hypervisor is used to encrypt _everything_. Now you have encrypted RAM, so physical possession of a r…

What does it do with the encrypted RAM? The only possibility I see is to take an sufficiently large block, decrypt it into the cache an run it there. But then again if you need to jump out of the block how does the CPU know which block to decrypt next?

page faults.... the hypervisor encrypts/decrypts on-demand. Much the same as virtual memory works (just that the plain-text data is only ever in the internal cache).

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#96

Post by retox »

Cacti wrote: post #86
retox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems incredibly self entitled to me. Why should your employer shell out money for whatever their employees decide? I don't understand it at all. What if you want to donate a controversial charity? If you feel that strongly about a charity double your own donation.

It's not everything. Usually there is a list of acceptable national charities for things like heart disease, diabetes, MS, education, poverty alleviation, etc. Chances are you'd recognize every one on the list. Sometimes employees vote on that list, sometimes it's mostly set by HR.

I see, thanks for the insight.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#97

Post by athenot »

tajen wrote: post #56
alsetmusic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple days after Tim Cook stepped into the CEO position, he reversed a Jobs policy and announced that the company would begin matching employee donations to charities. I considered this a fairly classy and subtle way to signal that he wasn't going to lie down on the job (it had been requested many times on company mailing lists). Source: I was on those lists.

As a French person without the culture of corporate donations, I'm both wondering why it was seen as negative that Apple didn't match? Shouldn't they redirect donations to people they prefer?

It's just another perk that's customary in large US corporations.

By comparison, it's like the ticket repas and chèques vacances in the French companies—getting subsidies for food and vacations would look quite odd to Americans.

Different cultures, different perks.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#99

Post by crypty »

TickleSteve wrote: post #95
crypty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it do with the encrypted RAM? The only possibility I see is to take an sufficiently large block, decrypt it into the cache an run it there. But then again if you need to jump out of the block how does the CPU know which block to decrypt next?

page faults.... the hypervisor encrypts/decrypts on-demand. Much the same as virtual memory works (just that the plain-text data is only ever in the internal cache).

My point is that it is impossible to know where the next code chunk is if it is properly encrypted. How does the page fault handler know which block to decrypt next without first decrypting the whole code module, where module is a closed piece of code without jumps outside.

In my opinion every scheme to enable that will cripple the encryption.

Re: Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

#100

Post by nicky0 »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #82
smnscu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, how gullible you are. It's obviously Apple and FBI are actually best buddies and this was just a PR move to sell more iPhones. Wake up, sheeple. /s Seriously, the cynicism in this thread is deplorable even for HN standards.

Eh you know right that TC was more thaneager to comply if FBI had issued the request privately? All the thing was a PR show from both sides.

Your source for this allegation?
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