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iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

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Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

epistasis wrote: post #30
kps wrote: post #18

Last I looked, iCloud was not HIPAA¹-compliant. Health-care workers who previously could have iCloud enabled, as long as they did not use it for HIPAA-covered documents, may be in for a big and expensive surprise. ¹ http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/

Clouds are almost universally antithetical to HIPAA, it's extremely rare to find a SaaS provider that will sign a HIPAA BAA. And anyone working with data under HIPAA had better know this already!

> Clouds are almost universally antithetical to HIPAA, it's extremely rare to find a SaaS provider that will sign a HIPAA BAA.

That's true of small services, but less so of big enterprise vendor (and, given the size of the health IT market and the big enterprises to serve in that space, that shouldn't be surprising.)

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#92

Post by quesera »

untog wrote: post #56
quesera wrote: post #23

Interesting, but: There are two kinds of users in this scenario. Those who don't care (99%) and those who do. If you count yourself among the latter group, as I do, then it's always solid advice to choose actions which clarify your intentions. In this case: - don't use iCloud - don't use iCloud sync for the app you use for private data - do explicitly choose to save the file locally - don't enable new features like C…

There are two kinds of users in this scenario. Those who don't care (99%) and those who do. Correct, and those of us that do should act on behalf of those who don't, because a good many of them are not technically inclined enough to know if they should care.

Totally agree. Which is why I mentioned that I'm glad the OP posted about it and brought it to our attention.

Apple is averse to asking users lots of questions in general, but especially difficult questions that most won't understand or know how to answer -- or the implications of their choice. Pretending for a sec that Apple will change their default setting here, to the detriment of 99% of their users but to satisfy the noisy us... I'd love to see suggestions on how to word this checkbox option.

iCloud has a lot of options already. It's a complicated concept for most people. I agree that this is borderline surprising behaviour, but I don't see how to avoid surprising someone.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#93

Post by firloop »

13 wrote: post #72
whizzkid wrote: post #4

Like Adobe streaming their Photoshop software from their servers, Like Google is trying to push Chrome OS so that you DO NOT need hard drives. Big boys in market, sooner or later, will move all software and hardware power to their side leaving you with a screen, mouse and keyboard to interact with everything. As soon as companies do not have control over whatever you are doing, they are losing benefit on it. Get read…

It's at odds with the name, but Creative Cloud runs independent of Adobe. "Cloud" refers to a harsher anti piracy check under the guise of a Dropbox like file storage that nobody uses.

I think the parent level poster was referring to the cloud-streaming capabilities Adobe is rolling out for Photoshop and presumably other programs, starting on the Chromebook.

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/adobe-joins-chromebook-pa...

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#94

Post by quesera »

sneak wrote: post #38
quesera wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, well I agree with you almost entirely. My only hesitation is that you and I have to recognize that we are on the fringes of the fringe, and be hyper-vigilant. This behaviour is only surprising if you get lax (as I was, too) about evolving functionality. My point about vim is that for me, it's a purposeful simplification. I do sometimes wish for a more flexible note taking app, but I know that it would take an…

This is OS functionality, so it would be akin to iCloud helpfully synchronizing your vim recovery files across your Macs (via a roundtrip to iCloud) without you ever asking it to - not a change in vim. This is why this is worth sounding the alarm over - it's an OS-level change that affects all apps, not just Apple's.

That's a good point, and is part of the reason I have iCloud turned off completely -- so I don't have to think about individual cases.

Obviously, it's completely possible that mdsworker or any of the other dozens of Apple daemons is slowly leaking my unencrypted RAM or swap files out to 17.x.x.x or somewhere else I've allowed in my packet filter configuration.

But that is the line between enhancement for the majority and malice for the targeted. As long as I force Apple to cross that line before causing me any damage, I feel comfortable trusting them (their corporate policy, their auditing, their hiring, their systems administration, etc).

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#95

Post by Someone »

"those in-progress (not yet explicitly “saved”) documents live in iCloud Drive"

So, what is it? On the drive or outside of it?

Does it matter? I googled a bit, but couldn't determine whether Apple can decrypt that data. It is encrypted both in transit and in the cloud, but do they hold the keys?

I know I have to trust them to do what they say they do, anyways, but if they do not have the keys, they cannot change their mind (say in response to a visit from the NSA)

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#96

Post by flatdeviant »

parasubvert wrote: post #46

Given this feature has been around for well over a year with eg. TextEdit, I'm amazed at the reaction. This is exactly the behavior I want and expect from Apple as a user, it would surprise me if they DIDN'T do this.

> I'm amazed at the reaction

And I'm baffled by yours, and others' in the thread. With the PRISM/Snowden revelations, Apple still refusing to encrypt their data center links, not using perfect forward secrecy, etc, the cloud simply doesn't seem like a good default.

They could make this opt-in, as it's supposedly linked to Continuity, but it's very clearly unintuitive, as evidenced by others in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8511115 for one). If even HN people (probably at least the 95th percentile in tech literacy compared to the general pop) didn't know this, then what about your typical PEBKAC user?

And, sorry to be incendiary, but I'm sure the NSA isn't displeased by Apple's UX choice here.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#97

Post by quesera »

sneak wrote: post #80
shurcooL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my unsaved files How would you feel if your unsaved files suddenly disappear? Would you blame apple for deleting files you explicitly chose to not save? You were relying on a feature in an unusual and unintended way. Sooner or later, that may stop working. The "unsaved files" being not synced to iCloud was never something that was meant to be guaranteed, it was just how it was. What I'm suggesting is that by opting…

I'm more interested in why the default behavior of internet users is so often to blame the victim. Does it shift the danger of the world squarely onto those who couldn't ever possibly be you, as your internal narrative has you as perfectly informed at all times? I'm a security-conscious engineer that's been using Apple hardware and software for two decades. Today, my computer took a bunch of private text and uploaded…

I think if you had presented exactly the same data as the results of dispassionate research, you would have gotten a somewhat tepid, but appreciative response.

Because you presented it as a personal violation and unconscionable shock, many people are reacting with incredulity.

I don't think you did anything wrong, tactically, and I think this is an important discovery. I do think you need to rethink your strategy around private data though, because the course of user experience is at odds with your desires.

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#98

Post by dfc »

epistasis wrote: post #37
patio11 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is why I don't have any HIPAA-covered data in Dropbox, but my risk assessment does not include "I have Dropbox installed on my machine, ergo, I need to be careful to never access HIPAA-covered info from my machine ", which is apparently the level of care I now need for Yosemite. (An upgrade which just got delayed indefinitely, for the obvious reason.)

You're a braver person than I then. I wouldn't download HIPAA data to a machine with Dropbox on it, anymore than I would be downloading protected research data to such a machine. But then, I'm not a doctor so I don't deal with one-off patient info, so it's easy for me to maintain separation. Though if this is actually a thing that many people want to do, perhaps the new Blackberry OS actually does something that peop…

What does the new BB do?

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#99

Post by flatdeviant »

Someone wrote: post #95

"those in-progress (not yet explicitly “saved”) documents live in iCloud Drive" So, what is it? On the drive or outside of it? Does it matter? I googled a bit, but couldn't determine whether Apple can decrypt that data. It is encrypted both in transit and in the cloud, but do they hold the keys? I know I have to trust them to do what they say they do, anyways, but if they do not have the keys, they cannot change thei…

> I know I have to trust them to do what they say they do, anyways, but if they do not have the keys, they cannot change their mind (say in response to a visit from the NSA)

Apple absolutely holds the keys to everything stored on iCloud. See their iOS security whitepaper [1], in the iCloud section:

> iCloud

> iCloud stores music, photos, apps, calendars, documents, and more, and automatically pushes them to all of a user’s devices. iCloud can also be used by third-party apps to store and sync documents as well as key values for app data as defined by the developer. An iCloud account is configured via the Settings app by the user. iCloud features, including Photo Stream, Documents & Data, and Backup, can be disabled by IT administrators via a configuration profile.

>The service is agnostic about what is being stored and handles all files the same way. There are two components for each file. The first is the file’s metadata, which consists of its name, extension, and filesystem permission settings. The second component is the file’s contents, which are treated by iCloud simply as a collection of bytes.

> Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys, and the file’s metadata, are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14....

Re: iCloud Uploads Local Data Outside of iCloud Drive

#100

Post by flatdeviant »

xenadu02 wrote: post #22

Apple is not a "PRISM" partner; I thought we all agreed that this was when the NSA discovered goto fail and/or some jailbreak exploits.

Nope. PRISM has do to with "direct access" to Apple's servers. This is according to NSA's own documents, and Apple may either be aware and forced by law to lie (Yahoo-style [0]) or unaware of this (i.e. they got hacked by NSA). Nothing to do with SSL being broken, especially as iCloud didn't run on Apple software but on Azure and AWS back then[1], and therefore iCloud wasn't itself vulnerable to goto fail.

[0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-the-government-could-have...

[1]: see iOS security white paper from Feb 2014, iCloud was the same back in 2012.

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