this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025

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182

Apple ordered to open encrypted user accounts globally to UK spying (www.theverge.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Picasso@thelemmy.club to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 50 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Apple’s iCloud backups aren’t encrypted by default,

Why the fuck not?

[+] AcesFullOfKings@feddit.uk 53 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's important to note here that even if you turn on this option, Apple does not support full end-to-end encryption, there are still multiple factors that they keep under standard data protection which means they still have the encryption keys. They keep this under the guise of deduplication so they can save on storage costs but some examples of this are:

the apps+file formats you have installed
your phone's make model and serial number
most metadata that defines what an item represents such as date time modification time
all file checksums (this is scary imo)

They explain how everything with their encryption works here

[–] towerful@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My experience of checksums are in things like serial where they can potentially recover a corrupt bit.
I presume in the case of encryption, a checksum is more of a hash of the raw data? Like a one-way deterministic compute. Easy to get a hash of data, extremely difficult to get data from a hash.
In which case, it's fine. Passwords are hashed (granted, multiple times), but a cryptographically secure hash is not to be underestimated.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You are correct, my concern with it isn't retrieving the data however, its the possibility that if the person involved had the means to, they could have a table of check-sums of files of interest. This system could be used to confirm or deny a file of interest is present on the device.

For the everyday person this is a non-issue, but from a privacy POV you should not be able to get any information in regards to what a file is.

Rainbow tables for password cracking works off a similar system, they take a bunch of commonly used passwords, hash them and compare them to leaked databases. If the hash matches an account you have the password. Most password handlers get around this by salting it, and hashing it repeatedly X amount of times, but I doubt that apple would do that for a checksum(and regardless they would know X and how it was made).

Again though I acknowledge that it's a paranoia level concern, but I still am firm that a true encryption solution should not be able to get any type of info out of it that may help the third party.

[–] Slax@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

People aren't as technically intelligent as most of us on here.

Most companies haven't put up proper MFA with apps and rely on SMS. Imagine they used security codes to recover their data from Apple ...

[–] BenDoubleU@lemmy.radio 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is there an article/source for this, or is it just a pic of a phone with a lock on it?

[–] pls@lemmy.plaureano.nohost.me 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://www.theverge.com/news/608145/apple-uk-icloud-encrypted-backups-spying-snoopers-charter

[–] L3s@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

@Picasso@thelemmy.club Could you post that in the body for us?

We're getting reports of this not being news/an article

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

He's not the OP.

[–] L3s@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Lol whoops

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 3 months ago

They should just cut off all service to the UK and show a message with the contact information for everyone that wants the back door.

[–] Octagon9561@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 months ago

Encrypt everything. Show these fascist politicians and their laws the middle finger.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Matrix.org is in trouble as they’re hosted in the UK.

[–] SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

poop

[–] pls@lemmy.plaureano.nohost.me 6 points 3 months ago

British humour gets me every time 😂

https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/07/british-government-secretly-ordered-apple-to-create-a-worldwide-icloud-backdoor/

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

This isn’t going to happen. I’m not sure what the UK is expecting here.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago

I wonder if this was UK s idea or they're just acting as underlings of the great orange potato head and his husband space social man.