Apple's Tim Cook defends encryption. When will other tech CEOs do so?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I have nothing but respect for Apple's stance with regard to cryptography, but Google has been more instrumental in getting strong crypto deployed on the Internet, and, just as importantly, in sweeping the minefield of crappy 90s crypto that defined most Internet crypto until recently.
I'm sure Cook believes what he's saying, but the real marketing strategy here isn't "crypto versus plaintext"; it's "consumer product company" versus "online service provider".
Seen through this lens, there's an argument that what Cook is doing is counterproductive. He's making an argument that Google can't sign on to, and using crypto as a wedge to drive the argument home. "Be a consumer product company, because then you can protect users with crypto".
Also: the kind of encryption that Apple is really making a stand for? They do a better job of it than Android, but Android provides the same encryption: what scares the USG about Apple is that iPhones are locked by default, and when they're locked, they can't be imaged easily. That's true of Google's phones as well.
Meanwhile, Google is doing a much better job of securing browser crypto than Apple is; Apple is almost an obstacle to better browser crypto.
If you want secure messaging, you need to be using OTR or Signal. Apple isn't really helping you here.
edit: Microsoft, Apple, Google, they all need to step up their game and make their case in public. Apple's not perfect but they're slightly ahead of the other two major OS vendors here.
Everybody can step up their game, I absolutely agree there.
Their use of TLS is like an amateur's use of XOR - a secure primitive in a very narrow context that ignores the big picture. Google is the type of backdoor the skinjobs are grooming us to accept.
I think it's only a matter of time until Apple Inc lands on "Game Over", but Google is playing an entirely different game.
Because some people need it explicitly stated.
Google can't show relevant ads for content they cannot read. Nor can they index it.
That's only true if Google is unwilling to trade ad revenue for subscription revenue. Google Apps for Work is a product area where Google is making that trade-off, and is presumably not cannibalizing their ad business. There is no reason Google can't offer a consumer-friendly subscription service that would be unbreakably private at similar pricing.
TLS for email is still in pretty bad shape but it's getting better. (Funny, I just noticed that Google's page says "Safe Browsing" while only "Safer Email".) I know you're not a fan of DNSSEC, but something like Secure SMTP via DANE is probably needed for meaningful improvement: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dane-smtp-01 (though it won't help with the chicken-and-egg problem of domain ownership validation by email)
Did you finish reading the article?
> Facebook’s WhatsApp has brought end-to-end encryption to more people – over 800 million – than any other service; and Google’s engineering team has been a leader in securing much of the web in the post-Snowden era.
And then they go on saying:
> But this is much more than an engineering fight – it’s a political one where public opinion is crucial.
Do you think the average voter knows what ECC forward-secure TLS is? Heck, I'd like to think I kind of know a little about the subject but I know _nothing_ compared to you and a bunch of other HNers.
But unfortunately, we live in a society where people who can vote are really scared of terrorism and lack an understanding of how technology works. If a politician tells them we need to decrypt "all the things" for their safety they'll happily vote for them[0].
We need the celebrities of the tech world to reach out and explain why we need crypto in a way they can understand.
[0]: No link really, just watch any of Donald Trump's rallies and tell me if you think those people care about encryption.
As to the argument in the article, are there other examples of non-Tim Cook CEOs of big tech companies saying anything like this?
"But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door's for everybody, for good guys and bad guys"
The closest I've found was a letter from many companies [1] which says "introducing intentional vulnerabilities into secure products for the government’s use will make those products less secure against other attackers." Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many others were signatories to that letter. So it certainly sounds like the companies might feel that way.
[1] https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/3138--113/Encrypti...
I think no
It seems that if you really want to guarantee privacy, you have to give the individual control over what they can install. Telling people to just "trust us" is not really good enough. And Cook is saying they are giving the user ultimate control by not having keys to their encryption but in reality that's nonsense... they are still requiring people to trust them.
This is probably the most native looking one of the bunch: https://forecast.io/
Certificate pinning helps against the MITM problem, but code integrity for downloaded client-side code is pretty tricky. Browsers could add some form of signed code pinning for power users, but it'd be tricky to be able to distinguish between legitimate updates and nefarious activity.
Me, to CEO: Hey, think we should ever build a backdoor into any of our
products that employ encryption to help the US government
and law enforcement?
CEO, to me: No, that's a terrible idea.
Me, to CEO: Okay good, just making sure we're on the same page.
CEO, to me: Yes, because we are compelled by law
backed by jail time or hefty fines.At the end of the day, we care about our integrity more than we do dollars.
Once three years of your life have been invested in the product and you have tens or hundreds of thousands of users, will your answer be the same?
I can't predict the future. I'd like to say our answer won't change. If it does, we deserve to fail.
If you really care about doing the right thing down the line, I recommend thinking very long and very hard about it because, down the line if you do succeed, the time you have to take the decision will come and you will not be expecting it by then. Underestimating the situation is a sure-fire way to fail your own expectations.
Governments don't care about small startups with little reach. They will ask you when it's hard.
There is no shortage of minds working on to create backdoors, or develop cryptographic methods that have backdoors, just look at Dual_EC_DRBG. It was a backdoor for the "good guys", but now its backdoor for everyone - eventually people will study the code and see the backdoor exists.
The crux of the issue is mathematics has no concept of good guys or bad guys, so as far as mathematics is concerned a back door for anyone is a backdoor for everyone.
Also can't the role of the good guy be split up among a group? Similar to the two man rule to prevent rogue agents from launching missiles, can't we have some sort of process that requires agreement among a majority of a few parties including the end user, the company who owns the software, law enforcement, and the (public) judicial system. If all it takes to break down the door to my home are a judge and law enforcement to agree, why can't we accept similar when it comes to data?
I can't comment on the mathematics involved but let us assume it's mathematically possible. You engineer this mythical nearly foolproof backdoor. You can decrypt this text with any of two keys. (It's my understanding that such algorithms actually exist already.) Congratulations you have achieved your goal. You have a working algorithm.
Now let's examine the results of actually using this algorithm:
You now have twice the opsec problem you had before. You have transmit this second key to a Government agency securely. You have to trust that Government agency to securely store, use, and dispose? of this key when they obtain it.
And what is the number one threat to secure systems? Operational Security. In fact many security professionals will tell you that the hardest part of security isn't the math behind the encryption. It's the opsec. In one fell swoop you double the threat in the most fragile part of your security.
I would also love a more detailed description of just "it is impossible because math" that everyone seems to be giving.
Really, it's inevitable. Someone doesn't even need to crack it, you just need a single careless or corrupt government employee to compromise the whole system for everyone for all time. People are proposing adding a single point of failure to systems whose usefulness is currently defined by their lack of such a single point of failure. Put that in there and we may as well all go back to using DES for everything.
Nothing anyone posted here has said why there can't be a multikey solution that allows access to data in a reliable way that would not be susceptible to a single point of failure or abuse. That sounds like a very hard problem, but I'm not convinced it is an impossible problem.
I'm not a cryptographer, but lets assume a multikey solution is 100% possible.
The very notion that you can trust the government with a global key to all encryption is the crux of the issue. How do you know that Donald Trump won't wake up tomorrow and sell that key China? What do you then do if Germany then demands that key? What if Congress decides that giving Israel he private key is important to stability in the middle east? Then what do you do is some nationstate sells this key to a blackhat organization? Welp, all of Google's encryption is now worthless because this "multikey" that was supposed to be for the USG ended up in the hands of a blackhat - and now we have another Fappening 3.0 on our hands.
Great now the whole world has this "multikey" making it virtually worthless because the entire world can decrypt it. If you as an end user cannot control who can and cannot decrypt your messages, then its worthless as an encryption scheme.
Its not a technical issue, and the solution isn't limited because we aren't smart enough. The fundamental problem is that you cannot trust any third party with such a multikey.
You could split the second key so no single party has the whole key which would mitigate but you still have the same problem where you have effectively doubled your opsec problem.
Additionally if half the key is compromised that still greatly reduces the work required to decrypt the text.
To make a car analogy, we can make a submarines that are waterproof, and we can make cars which looks like a car and you can drive on the road. However, to make a car that is also a submarine is quite hard, and close to impossible if you also had to make it look like a normal car. It would even be harder if it need perfect obscurity so that you couldn't even tell if you opened up the hood or started to disassemble the car.
It's perfectly possible and trivial to put in a backdoor that only works for people who have access to a specific private key.
Obviously if that private key gets stolen anyone can then access the backdoor, but that's true for anything, and you can mitigate it by storing the key in self-destructing immovable hardware with access limitations, as well as periodically changing the keypair (with signed updates).
The real problem is that there is no single "good guy" to entrust with that private key: in particular humans are inherently not fully trustable or good and both individual consumers and other governments have no interest in using or allowing backdoored products.
Let's pause to consider this. Math works, that's why even the NSA can't break encryption. I wouldn't want to tell you wrong and say that it's impossible, it's not, but it would take something like ten billion years to crack. Needless to say, there's a reason why they need a backdoor, and that's because math works.
However, if a backdoor were put into all electronic products, the strength of the encryption is now meaningless as any would-be attacker (government or otherwise) would just target the backdoor instead of trying to break the encryption. Why wait ten billion years for a computer to brute force the message when you could just find a flaw in something designed by the government?
"The problem with cryptographic backdoors isn't that they're the only way that an attacker can break into our cryptographic systems. It's merely that they're one of the best. They take care of the hard work, the laying of plumbing and electrical wiring, so attackers can simply walk in and change the drapes."
> Apple could collaborate with law enforcement to provide a false key, thereby intercepting a specific user’s messages, and the user would be none the wiser.
Key word is "could". Apple "could" also use its signing keys to install any kind of software on your phone to do whatever it wants. For example, to read your keychain and pull your private keys.
But for conversations that have already occurred – Apple does not have the private keys.
*either
That said, all Apple would have to do to fix this is to allow advanced users to see all keys listed as authorized for their account. I'm getting increasingly annoyed Apple hasn't done that.
Foreign govts? Rather, "against the constant threat of criminal governments and hackers."
Off the top of my head:
SSO ID Service / Cloud Photo Storage / Cloud Document Sync / Cloud Backup / Email / Instant Messaging / Music Store / Music Streaming Service / Cloud Music Service / Movie/TV Store / App Store / Push Notifications / Payments / Video Conferencing / Game Centre / eBook Store / Shared Calendaring / Notes / Large File Sharing / Personal Assistant / Maps
Weak?
It may be in their Apple’s financial interests to do so, but it’s also the right thing to do. As you (partially) say, they care about the user experience. That experience includes taking steps to protect user information and they’ve had a long track record of doing just that. They did this long before it probably had any noticeable effect on the bottom line.