Apple M4 iPad Pro OS Has New Security Exclave for Camera and Microphone Activity
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
Though I will admit I definitely misread it that way at first.
And 2014-ish Bromium (now HP) uXen + AX, https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2018/speaker/pratt/
If the "Secure Exclave" is a privileged VM (alongside iPadOS VM) on a minimal bare-metal hypervisor, does that open the door to unprivileged Linux or other user VMs safely running alongside iPadOS on iPad Pro?
Since this is drawn on the screen, typically you might assume system-level malware that's able to get access to window server, compositor, etc would be able to prevent the dot from being drawn, or remove it after the fact.
It sounds as if what they're implying is that there is a dedicated function in a separate hardware chip, outside of the control of the primary application CPU, and not addressable by the system software at all, that paints the dot on the screen as an overlay after the image is rendered by the software display stack, but before it is presented to the OLED/LCD. That would make it very difficult or potentially impossible for even root/kernel-level malware to hide.
That would definitely be noteworthy. And it sounds like a very Apple thing to do -- based on some of the Asahi team's notes about their current hardware, they have an affinity for novel and intricate solutions at the hardware/platform level.
It runs it's own microkernel-based OS to isolate individual tasks/functions to mitigate the impact of one of those tasks having exploitable bugs.
eNclave
eXclaveThe best info I've been able to find about the architecture is https://www.df-f.com/blog/ios17 Is there more info available, yet? Might this be related to Apple's recent sponsorship of seL4--https://sel4.systems/news/#member-apple?
interfacing with the display behind/on top of the display driver? i doubt it.
in the end the real target are repair shops. the marketing team just run with anything that smells like use privacy because it sells like hot cakes
Maybe a black circle sticker might help? I see people do that to block the camera. Should work just as well for the LED.
On the iPhone if you observe closely, it is drawing a green circle on the screen area where you normally see portions of your OS or app. It starts with a tiny circle and grows until it becomes a certain size. When you close the camera app, the circle turns orange and shrinks until it disappears.
On the Macbook, it is a bright green circle that just turns on like an LED and is located in the cut off portion of the screen that has nothing software related in it. When the camera using app is close the circle just disappears like an LED turning off.
It is not. What gave you that idea?
The only way to prevent this in any way would be a light sensor on the other side of the case which you could use to check the Indicator when the laptop is closed. But if you can’t trust your hardware to that level, there are thousands of other attacks you can do.