Are you referring to Apple? Because they don't promise that either.
Apple of course backdoors their phones for government surveillance access. But they do motivate a threat model that includes government surveillance.
I know parsing my comment in this way may seem difficult, but I used the terminology I did on purpose.
There are no illusions that Apple achieved the security properties that it has motivated.
Google Pixel does not even pretend to address the security concerns of journalists, politically active citizens, IT professionals, or individuals contacting attorneys.
Nice job slipping a completely unfounded lie into your response.
Starting with iOS 10, you can actually just mount the root filesystem disk image from iOS restore images. You are able to reverse engineer and audit any application or daemon that the OS runs. You can use open source tools (Such as idevicerestore) to perform an OS restore on your device, and point it directly at the filesystem disk image that you just audited the binaries of. That way you can be sure of what is being flashed onto your device if you have any doubts that the OS you just audited is the one going onto your device. No "blackbox" at all in this process.
I am looking forward to hearing any form of evidence regarding your claim.
Definitely an issue, but seeing as it was patched in iOS (and thus discovered in the SecureTransport source code), it would most certainly not still be in the wild.
With regards to auditing: The machine code is available for review, you just need to invest some time into learning the ARM instruction set. Most users of HN have invested time into learning various programming languages and that is why the trope of "open source == more secure" is often repeated, but the truth is that ARM assembly is just another programming language and is almost never obfuscated to a point in which you would not be able to read through it and understand what is happening once you understand the instruction set.
That said, an iBoot-level backdoor may not be as useful these days, considering Data partition is still protected with passphrase (and 10-attempt limit being SEP-enforced now).
I suppose you could argue root filesydtem access would be a concern, yet you would still need multiple zero-days to get persistence, defeat CS, etc.
While the argument regarding auditing is valid (for 64-bit), we both are aware that certain parties have privately been able to decrypt those. I highly doubt they would not say something if they had discovered a backdoor in iBoot.
Oh my.
Yes Apple backdoors their phones for government surveillance access.
There's no sneaking here. I'm saying it very clearly as a central tenet of my comment.
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Here's a list of things that Apple will provide from Apple's own Guide for Law Enforcement Access:
- Device Registration (name, address, email address, telephone number, iCloud Apple ID)
- Customer Service Records
- iTunes (name, physical address, email address, and telephone number, purchase/download transactions and connections, update/re-download connections, and iTunes Match connections, iTunes subscriber information and connection logs with IP addresses, specific content purchased or downloaded).
- Apple Retail Store Transactions (cash, credit/debit card, or gift card transactions, type of card, name of the purchaser, email address, date/time of the transaction, amount of the transaction, and store location, receipt number)
- Apple Online Store Purchases (name, shipping address, telephone number, email address, product purchased, purchase amount)
- iTunes Gift Cards (sixteen-digit alphanumeric code, nineteen-digit code, any purchases, name of the store, location, date, and time, user account
- iCloud (music, photos, documents, iCloud email, encryption keys, Subscriber Information, iCloud feature connections, connection logs with IP addresses, Mail Logs, records of incoming and outgoing communications such as time, date, sender email addresses, and recipient email addresses, Email Content, Other iCloud Content, Photo Stream, Docs, Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, iOS Device Backups, stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks and iOS device backups, photos and videos in the users’ camera roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages and voicemail)
- Find My iPhone (including connection logs)
- Other Available Device Information (MAC Address for Bluetooth, Ethernet, WiFi, or FireWire)
- Requests for Apple Retail Store Surveillance Videos
- Game Center (Connection logs with IP addresses, specific game(s) played)
- iOS Device Activation (including upgrades the software, IP addresses, ICCID numbers, and other device identifiers)
- Sign-on Logs (iTunes, iCloud, My Apple ID, and Apple Discussions, Connection logs with IP addresses, Sign-on transactional records)
- My Apple ID and iForgot Logs (password reset actions, Connection logs with IP addresses)
- FaceTime (logs when a FaceTime call invitation is initiated, content protected by 15 bits of entropy if secure enclave baked key is obtained from manufacturer)
And, from this thread on HN today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12977612): All call logs including contacts, timestamps, and durations including for third party applications on the phone like WhatsApp, Skype and Viber.
US law means that Apple must turn over data when demanded by authorities. These are access logs or files stored on Apple servers.
A backdoor would be granting access into your device so that authorities could access your non-icloud email, or data saved locally on device.
I'm baffled. I like to think of the quality of HN comments as much higher.
Apple had options to make this data unavailable by design to themselves and to law enforcement. They chose a design so that they could provide this information. The phone does it without the user's consent.
However, I understand that there are people who would rather redefine terminology to suit their cognitive dissonance.
In any case we can agree on the following:
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Apple provides a near majority of your sensitive information to law enforcement by the design of the product, and you can not use the product in a meaningful way without that information becoming available to state surveillance and state law enforcement.
All the data supplied comes from Apple's records, not your phone. If your phone was destroyed one day, and law enforcement requested this information the next, Apple would have no issue supplying it. They're not going to simply "not keep" records of your iTunes transactions and account details, for example.
Your complaints regarding the inability to use their product in a meaningful manner without letting Apple collect this data have merit.
> Yes Apple backdoors their phones for government surveillance access.
That very specifically is referring to the phone itself. Nobody would be arguing if you had said:
"Apple hands over non-encrypted information (such as webmail and other data that cannot be encrypted at a higher level) from iCloud and iTunes Store servers, in response to a valid legal demand"
To be fair, the amount of leverage the US exerts on businesses for military purposes is astounding. This should be factored into the understanding.