> I know they said they could have accessed that San Bernardino terrorist’s iCloud backup if only they had one. Not sure if they’ve change the security architecture since then.
I actually think they have, the shooting was in 2015 and iOS 10 was released in 2016 and was first to have some of the features he talks about in the video.
iCloud Keychain Payment information Wi-Fi network information Home data Siri information
So everything else, pictures, notes etc. etc. part of the iCloud backup, are not. Please not spread misinformation about this.
It’s pretty obvious really, they need to know the key for encrypted at rest data in order to be able to reset your password if you desire. They absolutely do don’t currently offset end-to-end encryption on the majority of data in iCloud backups.
But you’re right, the paper doesn’t say they do encrypted iCloud backups yet. The infrastructure is there to store encrypted backup keys in the keychain and escrow them so they’re recoverable yet Apple never has access. It’s probably the same foundation for iMessages in iCloud which they are just rolling out. That lets them store your very sensitive messages in the cloud and restore them to new devices and reset your password, all without them ever having access to your keys.
See the section on keychain escrow and recovery for more detail. It’s a game changer and makes storing data in adversarial clouds feasible.
Part of the reason is that people sometimes forget their passwords and that would lock them out of their backups. So they want to allow email/other methods of resetting the password and giving access to data.
But it would be nice to have it as an option. It’s worrying though that even technical people seem to believe it is end-to-end encrypted. When it very obviously isn’t.