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Tim Cook Says Apple Can't Read Users' Emails, That iCloud Wasn't Hacked
Apple CEO Tim Cook insists that Apple doesn't read -- in fact, says Cook, cannot read -- user's emails, and that the company's iCloud service wasn't hacked. ZDNet presents highlights from Cook's lengthy, two-part interview with Charlie Rose. One selection of particular interest:
Apple previously said that even it can't access iMessage and FaceTime communications, stating that such messages and calls are not held in an "identifiable form." [Cook] claimed if the government "laid a subpoena," then Apple "can't provide it." He said, bluntly: "We don't have a key... the door is closed." He reiterated previous comments, whereby Apple has said it is not in the business of collecting people's data. He said: "When we design a new service, we try not to collect data. We're not reading your email." Cook went on to talk about PRISM in more detail, following the lead from every other technology company implicated by those now-infamous PowerPoint slides.
Is it legally possible... Not everywhere certainly.
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/in...
Is he required to lie about this?
Not sure I believe it.
Since when is anyone's SMTP email secure in transit, when is anyone running a mailserver unable to read the mail?
Since when is any company immune from subpoena or contempt of court?
The partial quote distorts what he said. The "Apple cannot read" part is specifically about iMessage, not email.
Technically it wasn't hacked but Apple's poor security practices for password resets is what led to user's accounts to be compromised.
It seems they've picked "privacy" as a fighting point vs Google. They don't seem to realize that people either
1- don't care anyway
or
2- care, and know Apple is bullshitting.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Tim cook, talking head who has only ever held managerial roles in various fortune 100 companies, expels platitudes about the sanctity of the iGalaxy for users who slept through FISA and NSA backdoors and only recently began giving a shit when selfies and nudes were leaked from the magical cloud by notorious hacker 4chan.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Everyone knows iCloud was hacked.
They released the fix for the iCloud hack right after the fappening.
I do not believe him when he says Apple cannot access iMessage and FaceTime communications.
"With iAD you can get your message out to millions of people worldwide who use Apple products every day. Connect with users as they listen to music on iTunes Radio or while they use their favourite App Network. Find your audience using targeted tools built upon a foundation of registration and media consumption datahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v... start at 44 Min The idea is you spy on people in Apps not in search, because people spens 97% of their time in apps
You don't know anyone with @me.com or @icloud.com address?
Anonymous here because I know stuff.
The position of the big techy corps is that they are royally pissed with the government pestering them with secret requests for data that they can't refuse.
They want technology that lets them say to the government "No we can't give you the keys or the data because we can't access it ourselves".
This is a problem cryptographically, particularly in complex communication and storage systems. The key management is a bitch. But it can be done if you have competent cryptographers and crypto implementers on board.
It is no surprise that Apple claim what they claim because it is what they want.
Apple doesn't run public email servers. At least, I don't think so. Nothing like gmail, anyway. So they aren't transporting your email. Unless they back up your mailbox to iCloud
Yeah, they do run public email servers if you've opted in. Was user@mac.com, then user@me.com, and now user@icloud.com. Just using a device, no, your mail doesn't go to an Apple server unless it's one of their accounts.
And Charlie Rose isn't a techie. But if you want to really convince the Slashdot audience, it'd be better to have a high-level engineer answering these questions than a guy who's skill is managing the inventory supply chain.
#DeleteChrome
Reagan was happy, he was always smiling
They asked him, "what about the defiicit?"
He said, "there is no deficit!"
They told him, "but there is!"
So he said, "so there is."
...
30 years later
There is is no emal theft! But there is!.... waaaait for it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I was wondering about that, because it's nearly impossible to run a mail host and not be able to read the mail. I believe it is impossible when the mail isn't encrypted end-to-end.
It would also be impossible to offer any kind of spam, junk, antivirus service if you couldn't read the mail.
Since Apple isn't providing mail service, and doesn't proxy everything through it, your iDevice is configured to talk to your mail host. So if Apple could read your email they'd have to be doing something very wrong indeed. So he's essentially saying the same thing as if Google said they couldn't read your work email. Well no s#!t Sherlock, you don't have access to it.
I'm not saying that to Tim Cook, but the way it was reported was stupid.
I refuse to sign
The PRISM PowerPoint slides leaked by Snowden.
iCloud.com addresses are required for most of iCloud's services. Without iCloud loses a lot of functionality.
Guess what I don't have
Not true, you can register with iCloud with another email address, however it will then automatically allocate an iCloud.com address for you, but you don't have to use it nor does it limit the functionality. (This is what I do...)
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
A thousand angels, parsing the fuck out of every word on the head of a pin.
Prove Apple is "bullshitting". No, You may not use the incorrect description of "The Fappening" (i.e., "iCloud was hacked") as an example.
Tim Cook Says Apple Can't Read Users' Emails,
No he didn't.
Apple previously said that even it can't access iMessage and FaceTime communications, stating that such messages and calls are not held in an "identifiable form." [Cook] claimed if the government "laid a subpoena," then Apple "can't provide it." He said, bluntly: "We don't have a key... the door is closed." He reiterated previous comments, whereby Apple has said it is not in the business of collecting people's data. He said: "When we design a new service, we try not to collect data. We're not reading your email."
He said they cannot read iMessage and FaceTime, and they are not reading your email. That is a very important distinction. It might be one he was hoping you would miss, and you did miss it, but he did not say they can't access your email.
And I'm not blowing sunshine up his skirt. I came here intending to kick him in the balls (metaphorically, of course) for lying, but he didn't.
Pro-tip: If any system includes a password recovery mechanism that allows you to get back messages, then the administrator of the password recovery system can read your back messages.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Article subject says, “email,” but TFS says, “iMessages.” Those are different things, and the security of them is handled very differently because the mechanism of access is very different.
Apple being unable to access emails is impossible since they must deliver them in plain text to plain-old IMAP clients that don’t support decryption or key storage.
Apple being unable to access iMessage contents is plausible. My understanding of the protocol is something like this:
Alice starts texting Bob’s phone number. Alice’s iDevice contacts Apple’s servers to see if Bob’s phone number is registered with iMessage. If not, Alice’s device sends a plain-old SMS. If it is, Alice’s device receives a list of public keys for each of Bob’s registered iDevices. Alice’s iDevice encrypts the message with a session key, then encrypts that session key to each of Bob’s public keys. Her device transmits the encrypted message to Apple’s servers which then transmit it to each of Bob’s devices as they become accessible. Each of Bob’s registered devices can use its private key to decrypt one of the encrypted session key blocks, then use that to decrypt the message.
The private key to decrypt session keys never leaves Bob’s device. The session key never travels in the clear outside Alice’s or Bob’s devices. Apple can retrieve sender/recipient info (ye olde metadata), but no message contents.
The one gotcha to all of that is that since Apple controls all SSL certs involved in the process, they could MitM attack the process if they so-choose (or were so-ordered). There’s no certificate pinning or checking implemented, so Alice’s iDevice has no way of knowing if the public keys it retrieved for Bob’s iDevices might also include an extra key held by Apple or LEO.
Assuming Apple is compelled to intercept messages from Alice starting at a particular date, messages sent before that date at rest on their server should remain secure (unless they’re lying and are currently MitM or escrowing keys). New messages sent while the MitM was active could be decrypted and provided to LEO. Whether or not they’re performing an MitM at present should be detectable by analyzing the traffic during new device registration or sending messages — IE if Alice checks the keys received and confirms them all with Bob manually (jailbreak most likely required). If they don’t match or there’s an extra key, something’s wrong.
There’s an in-depth protocol analysis of iMessage here: http://blog.quarkslab.com/imes...
Scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr on that analysis. That post also includes proof of concept software to check for an active MitM attack, at least on iMessage for Mac.
tl;dr: Apple is in a trusted position where they could intercept message on a per-user basis if compelled to do so, but the general case of iMessage working as intended leaves messages encrypted on their server with keys they don’t have. I’m not aware of any way that Apple could perform that attack in an undetectable fashion, though performing that detection is well beyond the ability of most users.
Hi everyone, maybe someone more clever than me can figure this out: Could it be possible for Apple (or any other company) to store emails in an encrypted form so they can be delivered to me, but cannot be read by the company?
Let's say my email address is gnasher@icloud.com and my password is "Password" You are sending me an unencrypted email (no S/MIME) and it is received by Apple's email server. No matter how encrypted Apple stores the data, when I request my email, Apple has to send me the unencrypted email.
Now let's say Apple creates a public/private key pair for my email address and hashes the private key with my password; that happens the very first time that I ever read any email from their server. From then on, every email intended for me gets encrypted with the public key. Now if someone tries to read my email (for example I myself), they need to send the email address and the password to Apple's email server. Apple uses the password to try to unhash the private key, decrypts the email, and sends it to me.
If Apple never stores my password, they can't read my emails. Of course whenever they decided at time X they want to read my mails, they could read any emails received after time X, or as soon as I tried to download emails again with my password.
Questions;
1. Would that work, technically?
2. Would that work, legally? If Apple got a subpoena, they wouldn't be able at that point to give anyone my emails. Could they be forced to deliver all emails they receive on my behalf after receiving the subpoena, or all emails that I download after receiving the subpoena, or all stored emails once I requested delivery of emails?
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/e...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If someone forget their password, the messages are not lost for eternity. If they were truly stored in an unretrievable form (that required the user's password to unencrypt them), then a "password reset" would not work at all. The password protection is just used to authenticate the owner of the mail account. As long as you can get authenticated one way or another, the mail can be hacked. Since Apple has a password reset function, it would be trivial for apple on their own or on behalf of law enforcement to get access to emails. Maybe not accessible for apples customer service reps, but certainly their IT guys.
Tim Cook says they "don't" read your email and "can't" read your iMessages. So presumably, they CAN read emails but choose not to do so.
Which makes sense as most email clients out in the wild don't encrypt messages, so even if Apple were to encrypt messages stored on the server, they'd be doing it with *their* key, not the users (unless the user used S/MIME or PGP or GPG or what have you). If they want to interoperate with other email providers, they need access to the emails as that's how email works.
What did Cook not say? Did he bluntly say "we cannot read your mail"? Or did he just say "we don't have a key"? A general statement like "There is no way for us to read your mail or provide your mail to anyone else" would have more meaning. Reporters could ignore such statements, or at least every time they print one, point out how it could be misleading.
Think just for a second about how web email works, especially web e-mail that provides fast full content search. Or SMTP from outside systems. Can't read user's e-mail. Riiiight! Maybe with all open source client stack using public keys exchanged out of band.