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Apple Denies Helping NSA Subvert iPhone
New submitter aissixtir sends word that Apple has responded to allegations that the NSA has backdoor access to iPhones. Apple said,
"Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. ... Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them."
What makes you think they could stop the NSA?
Don't believe you.
It's now proven most American companies can't be trusted.
Well, since Apple is aware that whatever they claim can be sooner or later verified by checking Snowden data, they could be telling the truth.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
But I can't.
....which might not be to say much but I'm not sure I've heard anyone else saying "Not Me!". That could be down to the non-discolures of course.
They didn't say there was *not* an NSA backdoor. All they said was that they didn't work with the NSA to create one.
Because, of course, when your domestic intelligence agency asks you to do something, and you comply, you then also admit to it the first time someone questions your integrity.
It's almost as useful as government departments (esp. intelligence agencies) issuing press releases declaring that they only do what's in their mandate and according to the law.
Trust no one, but assume innocence until proven guilty. So, while nobody should trust Apple devices with sensitive data, any direct accusation must be backed up with evidence. It's then up to Apple to defend itself by attacking the evidence. What we have here is neither.
Apple is *proud* of its totalitarian business model, which is politely referred to as a "walled garden". Live in our little apple world where no one is free! No freedom means safety! You don't have to worry about bad words, or nipples, or someone pointing out that Jesus probably got laid all the time! We have complete control and domination over everything which operates in our ecosystem!
The apple philosophy is perfectly consistent with that of the NSA, the security state, and fascism in general. Add on some friendly govt subsidies and freedom to continue abusing the hell out of the american tax system...
Why doesn't he?
Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products
So Apple has worked for the NSA to create a backdoor in their products. I understand.
They should say there is no backdoor, not that they did not help making one.
Does Apple produce bad software which is trivially exploited (given that exploit is unconditional and for any and every current model) or did they do a decent job of security and been compelled to assist the NSA and keep it private?
The first thing noticed with all the other Snowden releases was how pathetic the gov worded things 'We aren't spying right now, and won't be in the future'. ok... but... that extra tense you missed....
I'm sure there's legal coverage for all of these people to flat out lie, and as shown, most of them have been, but the gov has their back, and I'm sure the wording of things signed meant they were compelled to lie.
So they hit up Google/Microsoft/Cisco, and Apple is the only one who didn't turn over their information when forced to and doesn't even know what all this is about? Yeah, right. Need to do better to earn our trust, as I'm sure the next leak will show that Apple not only knew, but probably gave them the docs to allow this to occur.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
This rogue agency will destroy billions upon billions of dollars worth of American commerce before its done.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I seem to recall Apple recently acquired a certain type of government security approval. I wonder if any of that is related.
Appelbaum acts as if there could be no other way, as if it isn't possible for the NSA to hack into things the old-fashioned way. It's kind of telling about his bias, hmmm? He doesn't want to believe that the NSA can hire smart people who work really hard to hack into anything and everything. He doesn't want to believe that government contractors aren't just ripping off the government.
As expected read the wording carefully and think of possibilities that aren't covered.
"We didn't work with the NSA on the back door", we put it in all by ourselves.
"We don't know about the NSA targeting our products", why would they need to we give them what they want.
...We're just entirely incapable of implementing a modest semblance of security to our devices.
Seriously? Why do we keep hearing companies swearing left and right that they're entirely incompetent?
If it were me, I'd be covering up incompetences left and right with "the NSA made me do it". At this point, we know how persuasive they can be to companies when they care to be. Seems an easy cop out.
Working with the NSA most likely comes with a caveat: "you follow this gag order or we will put you in jail for interfering with national defense and releasing classified information." In other words, something almost as bad as giving aid to the enemy.
I hate conspiracy theories, but it is plausible that they are under a secret order from a secret court ordering them to deny everything. This is precisely why in the US we should never every have secret courts.
Don't believe you.
Rhetorical question: why not?
If the "amateurs" can compromise iOS security, the professionals shouldn't have much of a problem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2Own
Physical access to the iPhone was mentioned, so that's not surprisingly that the NSA can get at the data.
Blackberrys were also mentioned in the "Spiegel" article, but that was actually about getting at the e-mails via compromising the BES server. So it looks like in the case Blackberry, the crypto (both over-the-air and on-device) is secure. Which isn't too surprising given that RIM/Blackberry owns Certicom and uses ECC crypto (which the NSA has been pushing with Suite B), and given that BB has EAL 4+ certifications (and iOS does not):
https://www.google.ca/search?q=blackberry+EAL
However, in Pwn2Own BBs were compromised by visited exploit-filled websites.
the NDA they are forced into is punishable by jail time due to the way the Patriot Act works.
Apple products: The NSA may be able to access your data.
Android Products: Everyone else AND the NSA can access your data.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really, these hi-tech companies should learn a bit of history, lest they come up with public statements that make them look stupid without adding a whit to their credibility.
Even if Apple isn't working with the NSA, the cellular baseband manufacturers probably are, so regardless what phone you are using, your in the same boat! (Forget iOS, Android, Linux, etc, it's the baseband controller and associated OS that is interesting if you want to snoop!)
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Security/Conceptual/cryptoservices/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011172-CH1-SW1
Cryptographically strong random number generation
Encryption and decryption (both general-purpose and special-purpose)
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/security/conceptual/cryptoservices/cryptoservices.pdf
[Page 10]
"elliptic curve encryption",
RSA random number generator = keys to palace...
.
What are the particular security vulnerabilities that the DROPOUTJEEP program exploits to install the NSA rootkit? Are those vulnerabilities still hiding in the iOS operating system?
Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products,
Note that they specified the NSA, but did not disclaim the possibility of working with some other group, like say a sub-contractor who didn't officially disclose to Apple the fact that they were an NSA sub-contractor. Surely the NSA isn't the only part of the US government that would love to have unfetterred "legal" access to arbitrary iphones.
With all the deliberatedly worded non-denial denials we've seen in response to NSA revelations, you'd think that Apple's PR firms would know to make an absolute denial if that was their intent. That wouldn't stop some people from thinking Apple is out-right lying. But why even give them an excuse, unless Apple does have something to hide and they want plausible deniability if the truth ever comes out?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't like Apple's marketing approach, and I don't know if anyone can believe their promises, but I do like how Apple lumps the NSA with malicious hackers attacking Apple's customers.
So any denial by anyone is now irrelevant. The rest of the planet now has as much trust in American services / hardware as we have in our own government.
Hell, I would expect a huge push to remove the US from any position of authority when it comes to anything Internet related. I certainly wouldn't blame them for it.
The rest of the planet should be fun and ban all American company sposored hardware / software declaring them a National Security risk. We'll quickly find out if Corporate America are truly buddies with the NSA or not when profits drop right through the floor.
Page 16/272: Acknowledgments
Apple would like to thank the National Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Defense Information Systems Agency for their assistance in creating and editing the client and server security configuration guides for Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Regardless of whether Apple's claims are true or not, I think it is awesome that Apple called the government malicious hackers.
Thou shalt not use tools thou does not understand, lest they rise up and smite thee
It's not like someone or a group inside Apple sent a company wide email that they were working with the NSA on something for the iPhone. I work at a big law firm and we are tasked with doing things that only a few people in IT are aware of at any given time. Certain types of discovery and data captures, legal holds, monitoring, exporting data, redirecting email, etc.. I imagine any big company does the same and when that company is spread out around the world and involved in manufacturing in different countries, it would be even easier to slip this stuff in.
hahahahaha hah hahaha. oh my god, that is the joke of the year. thanks for the laughs, apple!
It has been reported that Apple was not complicit in the remote exploit and that the original iPhone software was rushed and incomplete. This exploit applied to the original iPhone running IOS3.x and earlier and had to do with remote debugging/error reporting. The poor phone only had 128MB of RAM and needed lots of debugging.
"Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone."
... Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers."
Translation: "the NSA did all the work and we didn't have to work with them."
"Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products."
Translation: "we weren't aware they were supposedly trying to hack our products because we already allowed them carte blanche access."
"
Translation: Our customers are best-protected by us having a lot of money and not being in secret courts all day so we comply with government organizations' suggestions.
"We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them."
Translation: since the NSA are not malicious hackers but our best buddies, we will happily focus our efforts on black-hat bad guys. Nothing to see here.
You know... if one of these companies would just say "there are no backdoors in our software. We do not allow the NSA or any other organization access to customer data or communications under any circumstance. These are not new policies and go back to the inception of our iOS line of products", then I could take them seriously. Instead their lawyers draft these PR statements that use such mind-deadening language that it's trivial to poke fun at them.
I don't honestly believe Apply has allowed a back-door, but their statement just sucks.
"Oh no... he found the
Happy new year!
2014 is an anagram of 1024, so we must be up for something good.
Apple Inc. i.e. the executives controlling the company are fully aware of the rules and restrictions and compliance with the rules regarding National Security activity when contracted for work by a Federal agency conducting National Security work.
If Apple Inc. was working in accordance with those rules and having received significant money from the Federal agency for their work and corporation, a response to a direct question regarding the National Security work and corporation by a third party must be given using these precise legal works, "I am not authorized to conform or deny."
The new question is, "was Apple Inc. authorized to deny?"
The authorization, if issued, will come from the Federal agency or the President of the United States of America.
Did Obama authorize Apple Inc. to deny?
Mr. Cook meet with the President on December 16, 2013, other than what has been reported by the main stream media!
Prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, it was possible to sync an iOS
device completely, via USB cable which connected the iOS
device to the main computer.
Now in Mavericks the iOS local sync is gone. Personally I believe this
has been done because it will make it trivially easy for the NSA to collect the
contents of iOS devices from various central points ( the central points
would be the servers Apple uses for iCloud ).
So no, I don't believe that Apple will do anything to ///
protect the people who buy hardware from Apple. I've been one
of those buyers but I won't spend any more of my money with
Apple, because even if they aren't helping out the spooks
they are selling shit that doesn't work well without even bothering to
let users know about the loss of important features in their operating
system before those poor users "upgrade". That is inexcusable behavior
on the part of a company which pretends to care about how its products work.
I work in a relationship role for a large firm that most people have heard of. Let me fill all of you in on exactly what was said here.
First time poster as I am normally not interested however I felt that most of the comments were not addressing the whole verbiage of the defense.
"Apple has never worked with the NSA" ----- We did not have a contract with or resources sharing agreement with the NSA. We have friends though. ... Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers.
"to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone" ----- Whatever was created was not called a backdoor or we did not create it. Someone else did.
"Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products..." ----- THIS alleged program. We were given a different name or aware of others.
"
----- Apple will and probably does investigate breach attempts. But this is not a breach. It was a voluntary. So we aren't doing anything.
"We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them." ------ Malicious hackers, Security Attacks, as stated above this was voluntary. We will continue not using resources to patch the vulnerabilities.
In summary Apple did not deny. It is simply used double speak/meaning to say, it was not officially worked, we didn't refer to it by this name, we did not personally create the vulnerabilities and we aren't going to fix them. The NSA would be like a vendor to a large company in this instance. The company can sit back and say they did not personally take malicious action. However, they can't get away from the fact that it happened under their watch so they must respond and deny, which as pointed out by others can be proven by subsequent revelation by Snowden or others, or they can type a paragraph which is true and doesn't admit guilt while misguiding others into making their own conclusion.
Remember, you are the one they have to convince, not themselves. The executives are not going to let someone like government or shareholders just waltz in and destroy what they've spent years building. They will lie or mislead and if caught, after years of arbitration and lawsuits, can settle for a small lump sum that pales in comparison to the money they could have made in the meantime. Look at BP and the trust fund they setup for the Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup. They made a profit on the interest and reinvestment of that money.
Believe me or not it's entirely up to you. I work in an area who has written quite a few of these and trust me it works to divide and conquer individuals who have different interpretations of literary/writing style. Either way, most people are not paying attention... and that's a fact.
The only valid response to Snowden allegations are to dismiss them and consider them disinformation as long as he is not in US custody. Once he is in a court based on US law (the only one that matters as opposed to the court of public opinion) then all of that can be used as evidence against him.
(Of course, /. would rather silence any dissent with -Infinity, Disagree from the idolatry of Snowden even if truth.)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program
How could they be aware? I mean, it's only been widespread news for the last year or so!
Their statement is 100% lawyer-drafted weasel language crafted to tell enough truth that they don't get in trouble, while still lying about whatever it is they're lying about. Next it'll be something like "We're really sorry you think there are security flaws in our product, and we're working hard to change that perception."
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
When we start hearing of damning leaks of Chinese and Russian military/intelligence being exposed, then you might have a point.
It would most certainly vindicate those who saw China walking out with Nortel IP and putting it into a government-run Huawei.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
OK so what government agency or contractor did Apple help with a back door to the iPhone? The rant about "malicious hackers" is a classic switch to get the consumer to think Apple is denying the program. But the government of the United States is not a malicious hacker.
"the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device... All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted." Say you're a government trouble maker/political rival/whistle blower/unwanted/whatever and next thing you know they find inappropriate content on your phone. How are people not rioting in the streets over this?
There really is no need to deny because nobody believes you or cares.
Whether by your own incompetence or collusion your platform is insecure "100% of the time".
Even when operating as designed and even assuming no secret backdoors both iOS and Android have methods of remote installation of software without giving user a choice or prompt. These platforms and the networks they run on are all defective by design.
Not one word that comes out of the mouth of any employee of any US company can be trusted, because US law DEMANDS that such employees LIE about any NSA operation carried out by their company, under penalty of legal punishments INCLUDING the death penalty.
So the owners of Slashdot think that you are so very very thick, they can push FUD like this, and convince many of you that reports of NSA spying are exaggerated.
Snowden's leaks, and other sources, PROVE the extent of NSA operations. The presence of back-doors in the software and hardware described proves NSA spying. Now, if you are the kind of cretin the owners of Slashdot hope you are, you will say "no, NSA spying is NOT proven, because there is always the possibility, no matter how slim, that the evidence points to some other explanation". However, in the real world, 'proof' works on the balance of probabilities- because NOTHING in the real world can be proven beyond a doubt- it is a common fallacy to suggest absolute proof lies outside the field of formal mathematical logic- it does not.
Slashdot encourages its stupider sheeple readers to listen to the vile shills that rely on this fallacy, and repeat it whenever possible. It is a form of "I won't believe it unless I see it with my own eyes".
The trick is to notice whom the leaders of Dell, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle etc., choose to hang with in their 'important' time. Here's a clue- it ain't you or your 'class'. You (and you family and friends) are less than cattle to them- and the goal is to put you under absolute 'control' They have no hesitation stating, over and over, that there are too many of you.
Want to get inside their heads- the powerful people who fall over themselves to cooperate with the NSA? Look to Syria. Wave after wave of the most murderous terrorists imaginable are sent into Syria to attack the civilian population of that nation. The over-lords of this project are the leaders of the West, especially those within the UK and USA. And this agenda, and the full surveillance activities of the NSA, are supported completely by the self-same set of people.
Raping, torturing and bombing civilians in Syria, and installing bugs in your Dell server, are simply facets of the same war against general Humanity by those who claim to be members of the 'elite'. To the same people who authorise back-doors in Apple and Microsoft products, such acts of atrocity are but a reasonable means to an end.
But it gets far worse. Google is now fully involved in implementing future generations of autonomous ground based 'tanks'- holocaust machines that can be mass produced, like drones, and sent in place (initially) of US ground troops into the villages, towns and cities of nations like Iran. Google has purchased EVERY available, worthwhile 'robot' company, and by 'robot company' I mean companies actively involved in producing 'battlefield' killing machines. While the vile shills will make jokes about 'Terminator', thinking you THAT stupid, Google simply wants large deadly tracked vehicles that can slaughter EVERY Human within their vicinity as the computers identify every Human visible from the road position, and guide automatic machine guns to mass murder these Humans far faster than the Humans can respond.
The owners of Google have stated to their genocidal allies in Israel that they will not stop until Israel is able to command its American servants "destroy this nation", and American leaders are able to persuade the sheeple of America to allow the extermination of this nation using machines largely designed by Google. Google claims, to those in charge of the US military, that they can move so much faster than the Chinese or Russians in this area, that this time the US will WIN this arms race, and will be able to use the victory to finally dominate the planet. Google uses air drones as an example, falsely claiming the US and Israel had a drone advantage of 15 years plus over other nations (actually, Israeli drones were designed specifically to MURDER civilian targets, a form
no it isn't, the anagram would be 4102
The simplest explanation would be that he is indeed harming the country with such allegations. But then you'll try to argue that it doesn't apply when truth hurts Snowden's case.
Until he is in US custody and presents his case in a US-jurisdiction court, all he has are allegations. Of course, that means that you'd be seeing the inevitable conviction of an individual that continously incriminates himself (and others such as the "journalists" and "lawyers"). The sooner he turns himself in, the less he has facing against him.
-sethstorm
My friend worked for the NSA for a few years in exchange for them paying for his grad school. He said he was working on iphones and that's all he could say. He left as soon as his time was up and went to seminary. I joke that he had to repent after seeing what they were doing.
Once in custody cut off a few toes and fingers, then his penis.
Now lets see what the pig's got to say for himself.
Per the video, the NSA iPhone compromise requires the NSA to obtain physical access to the device, and suggests they did this by rerouting shipping.
To me, that says that what they've done is exploited holes in iOS -- of which there have been many, that's how jailbreaks are possible -- and used them to install their own spyware. There's not only no need for them to involve Apple to do such a thing, involving Apple would actually be a bad idea, because it increases the number of people who know about it and might leak it.
I believe Apple had nothing to do with it. I believe the NSA has spyware for every version of iOS ever made, as well as Windows, OS X, Android, Linux (well fragmentation of the last two means there might be some versions which are safe -- but not the major ones), AIX, etc. If they don't, they're not doing their jobs. I don't think anyone should be the slightest bit surprised by any of this.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Oh you can't?
Oddly enough, the NSA did a lot of work on SELinux and mandatory access controls, then released it. Wouldn't surprise me if they're referring to either that or basic server/firewall/access-control setup.
How would an official backdoor work?
a) Windows Update
b) App Store Update
Complete triviality. Any targeted device gets updates routed somewhere else.
All of Snowden's evidence of those complex cracks make it much less probable that there was any general manufacturer supported backdoor. I think Apple's being truthful.
Besides, what did you expect the NSA did? Do you think the Russians and Chinese have worse cracks? Certainly not.
"harming the country"...along the same lines of harming a child molester by turning them in...he's only harming the security apparatus...said security apparatus already caused massive harm, they just kept it covered up until now.
Anonymous Coward fail.
The problem with these denials is that they would say the same thing regardless of whether or not they have collaborated. There is no way to verify the truth. What we do know is that the Government is capable and willing to force these companies to lie or face criminal prosecution. They are intimidating people into immoral treasonous behaviour or face prison. It isn't Apples fault that they are put in this situation; they are in the same boat as all the other US companies.
Of course, the US is far from the only country with intel programs. They are however in the best position to do so, and have budgets that are more than the GDP of small countries (perhaps not so small). Considering the staggering cost of the NSA and its woeful record in terms of actionable intel it may have possibly, maybe, been a better idea to spend it on say space exploration that would get us off this rock.
It is hard to believe the reputation of the US could get lower than under Bush... but it seems I underestimated the ability of the US Administration to stuff up. Good ole United States, has the best politicians money can buy. So you want 'Change'? Who you gonna vote for now?
If they're co-operating with the FBI to create a backdoor, then they wouldn't be precisely lying now, would they?
It's true:
https://ssl.apple.com/support/security/guides/docs/SnowLeopard_Security_Config_v10.6.pdf#page16
At the time the document was published, 2008, any iPhone could be booted off a RAM disk, and spyware installed, 100% of the time.
There are several companies that sell spyware that runs on iOS, and they have since about 2008. Existing UNIX spyware kits could probably be pretty easily adapted to iOS as well. Given the $0 cost quoted in the document, it is likely they were customising an existing toolkit for the platform, rather than just buying COTS.
(mspy and Mobile Spy are two, but there's others as well, including some Beltway bandits)
No active participation or co-operation by Apple required at all - this applies to everything from the original iPhone up to and including the iPhone 4.
WTF is that a revelation to anyone ?
Reality is a little different, in that since 2010 or so, Apple closed the firmware bug in the A4 that enabled the "guaranteed to boot to a root kit DFU RAMdisk bug", and got a whole lot better along the way with its cryptography and implementation of a hardware root of trust.
Since the A5 processor came out, there has not been any :
- RAMdisk boot exploits (aka LimeRa1n exploit)
- "hostile" jailbreaks -ie that do not involve prior knowledge of the device passcode (Absinthe, RedSn0w, Evasi0n and Evasi0n7 all require the device to be manually unlocked as part of the process if its an A5 based device running iOS 6 or later)
- bypass for supervised mode that blocks USB port access
The above mentioned spyware gets wiped out by a DFU mode restore (aka the "connect to iTunes" screen). (yes, I've tested this)
The only way that this could be currently be viable, is if Apple has handed over the secret key for the hardware root of trust to the NSA. Thats a big call. Not impossible, but its not something the document claims, and it is something Apple denies.
In addition, and this may be hard for people to grasp as it doesn't fit their preconceptions, but claims made in documents such as leaked by Snowdon are not necessarily always TRUE (in the general sense, or outside a very specific set of preconditions). Its quite common for internal briefing documents to over-simply facts or make aspirational claims in order to make that part of the organisation look good to the non-technical higher-ups in the bureaucracy. I'm not saying that the NSA hasn't engaged in a massive effort, just that you can't cherry pick paragraphs from individual documents and extrapolate from them reliably 6 years into the future.
... if it wasn't for the fact that the iPhone 5s contains a fingerprint sensor. Who is to say other phones don't? What is to prevent anyone from collecting our fingerprints and matching them to webcam photos? If you want to get very paranoid, putting this kind of technology into a single device doesn't radiate "harmless".
This is nothing new. They aren't going to admit it. and yes, they allowed it.
Given that it's happened at least 10-20 times straight, someone really, really, really can't take dissent. It'll only show that you're much like the people you think the NSA is.
Snowden's actions being of questionable ethics won't be changed by modding me down into Bad.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That guide actually makes the device NSA safe. It's pretty comprehensive and when applied in full should please even most paranoid and security conscious users.
Politely, thats crap, ever heard of updates? They, apple/Google/MS all do "updates" that "change"your phone/computer settings without your permission. That activate "features" in your system until you find out about later after some security expert notifies the public about what they did. Even then you have no idea what else has happened, since the companies/the phone/computer/parts/whatever/ even don't know what has been shipped, or refuse to elaborate on what they did, or they have been ordered by the FISA courts to keep quiet about what was added.....
And stay shut up or go to jail.
Of course they have helped. They have no other choice.
They removed the sync for contacts and calendar, the rest is still locally synced. You can sync those 2 to any cloud provider, including rolling your own caldav server, not just Apple's, it just defaults to Apple's. It was an annoying move, but ascribing a motive beyond "we really would like people to use iCloud more because it ties them to continuing to use Apple products" isn't really supported by the facts (especially since the framework, SyncServices, had been declared deprecated since 10.7, so it wasn't exactly unexpected)
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
The only part of this I believe is the part where Apple says they never worked with anyone on anything. Apple is like a NIH walled garden.
A company has to be chosen to be made an example of.
I think Apple would be an ideal choice:
1) Closed systems seem to be at the heart of the issue here. Companies that do not use open source or open systems have a much higher degree of compromise than say your typical open source project.
2) Trying to identify whether or not Apple is telling the truth with the amount of money they are likely to have received from the NSA/CIA for cracking their phones with 100% reliability, as disclosed here is a good example I think of who to believe. (Hint, not the company with the Apple LOGO.)
3) Furthermore, if we do not make an example of these companies, they will destroy the economy of technology by subverting products they sell on the open market allowing your competitor, or the NSA if they don't like your company to steal your IP capital.
If we do not take a stand here, and make an example of Apple or HP, etc by depriving them of their profits, and destroying their products viability we will lose the entire world market.
In fact, if things are allowed to continue, you won't be able to get a job doing anything with computers because they will be deemed too risky to use for just about anything that makes money, requires capital investment etc.
So if we take down say Apple and bankrupt it like we did with SCO (A very coordinated effort industry wide to replace SCO products with LINUX essentially killed the company.), it will get widespread attention and companies will stop cooperating with the NSA/CIA and more than likely improve their products so that they can't be modified in shipment, software is more open and secure. A win win!
I would suggest the first place we start with a company, such as Apple is getting rid of their products in your home by using your influence in computing if you are a professional and work in the field of computing to not use their products.
Apple, unlike HP is easier to attack with your friends as HP doesn't make iPhones and general consumer products that are 100% guaranteed to be crackable by your local NSA/CIA goon squad.
Most of my friends who use Apple products do so because of fairly personal reasons, not really good ones. If you can point those out, you can get them to try something else, like Cyannogenmod!
I did this by allowing my cousin for example to borrow my Android Cyanogen mod phone for a few days, and got him to dump his iPhone.
We could call the initiative the $1 Apple Stock Drive. (i.e. because we won't stop attacking the company until its stock is worth $1).
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Sneakernet is old and slow, but it will never die.
Apple loses every single pwn2own competition, so yeah, it is pretty ridiculous that they claim to have industry leading security.
2012: "Pwn2Own 2012 has concluded with Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox all being compromised. Apple’s Safari was the only browser to be left standing in the competition "
2013: "Pwn2Own 2013 Result: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Adobe Reader, Flash & Java Owned Only Safari Survived "
Google's core apps/services on Android are just as closed as Apple's, and they are on a trajectory to close off more and more things. Google is also known to delete data from user's phones without consent, unlike Apple so far.
Oh wait, you're just on an anti-Apple troll roll... silly me... carry on.