[HN Gopher] Why Apple sends spyware victims to this nonprofit se...
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Why Apple sends spyware victims to this nonprofit security lab
Author : latexr
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-12-21 11:24 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| saagarjha wrote:
| > While it may look like Apple is abdicating its responsibility
| to protect its users
|
| After reading the whole thing it still looks like that. After
| doing all that work to identify who's been targeted with
| mercenary spyware why would you want to go to someone else to
| have them try their best at finding who it was?
| brookst wrote:
| Agree the article doesn't answer the question at all.
|
| My guess is expertise and scale; if Apple finds five such users
| a day, that doesn't support a staff of 100 forensic experts.
| But if Apple, Facebook, Google, etc, etc, find 500 users a day,
| that might.
|
| But who knows? The article sure doesn't.
| nottorp wrote:
| The real question is: does Apple donate to this nonprofit?
| chmod775 wrote:
| According to this[1] it looks like Apple is more or less
| directly funding the helpline, so it's more like Apple is
| outsourcing the work.
|
| Note that I don't think the 2024 table is complete yet.
| Compared to 2023 there's hardly anything on it. In 2023 you
| can see that Meta was specifically funding the helpline.
| Lots of other major tech companies show up too.
|
| Though mostly the charity seems to run on European taxpayer
| money (~60% of its funding).
|
| [1] https://www.accessnow.org/financials/
| nottorp wrote:
| Looks like Apple has been funding them for at least the
| past 3 years so this may even be fair.
|
| If you're really targeted, "they" will also go for your
| non Apple devices like your "smart" TV. So you could
| probably use support to harden all your tech stuff.
| pdpi wrote:
| That's a good point.
|
| Apple's game is deep vertical integration. That's all
| fine and dandy for selling products, but helps not one
| bit for customers who aren't all-in on Apple's ecosystem.
| A third party who only does this sort of work, in a
| platform agnostic way, is the sane way to handle things.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Right. If there is training or some other non-Apple/vendor
| agnostic stuff that has to go on (VPN) or device management
| they probably don't want to get involved.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| >After doing all that work to identify who's been targeted with
| mercenary spyware why would you want to go to someone else to
| have them try their best at finding who it was?
|
| Thus is a great question and Apple's actions here seem to
| undermine many of the privacy arguments they've made against
| Right To Repair.
| metabagel wrote:
| I don't see how you can come to that conclusion. Apple has
| obviously gone to significant effort to detect and notify in
| these situations, and they actually provide helpful information
| - pointing victims to an organization which can actually help
| them. Abdicating responsibility would be to do none of these.
| freehorse wrote:
| This is a very verbose article that does not really engage with
| the actual question in the title. I still do not understand why
| apple (and in general big tech it seems?) reroute users to
| external forensic services instead of doing the forensics
| themselves. This only thing the article says about it is "they do
| not want/it is better this way".
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It said that AccessNow is really good at intake, and it
| wouldn't be good for Apple to be in the business of inspecting
| so much personal data.
|
| My guess is that if Apple did this themselves, it would be
| firewalled from most of Apple, so like AccessNow, so hopefully
| they help fund AccessNow.
| mktemp-d wrote:
| The engineering requirements to build a branch of a company
| with the security needs of specialized SOC would be crazy
| endeavor and to the point that whatever comes of it would
| probably look as foreign to the main company's function than
| what currently exists. Having a separate non-profit agency
| handle these cases would not only allow for the agency's
| incentives to align, but also the overall security design
| approach to its facilities and internal networks. It's a win-
| win for both private and public interest imo.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you are targeted, presumably, they will be attacking you
| from every angle they can. If you have other tech besides
| Apple's, then that's just another attack vector. If Apple did
| this, they'd be Apple focused leaving many vulns. By this group
| being not Apple specific, they can be up on all the ways like
| IoT devices, Android, etc.
|
| Based on that, it seems smart for each of the tech players to
| support the 3rd party solutions
| tptacek wrote:
| Apple does extensive forensics itself, and spends more on
| platform and hardware security than all but perhaps? two other
| companies in the world. By referring people to nonprofit labs,
| Apple is encouraging information about spyware systems ---
| which target multiple platforms --- to be widely disseminated,
| and allows the OSINT process, which Apple has no comparative
| advantage in running, to work out targeting and sourcing.
|
| The norm in high-end platform security practices at companies
| is to keep cards as close to the vest as possible, revealing
| information largely in the form of feature-style announcements
| of security improvements. The norm Apple is setting here is
| better.
| newsclues wrote:
| This is why I read more comments than articles.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Consider the liabilities, expectations, and political issues if
| Apple was doing such support work in-house. For the last -
| Apple has large, profitable operations in a fair number of the
| countries which might be targeting certain dissidents and
| journalists. Mr. Cook does _not_ want any "you are aiding our
| worst enemies..." pushback when he is negotiating with the
| governments of those places.
| fweimer wrote:
| It's possible that the vendor has targeted the user as the
| result of a court order. (Not necessarily by installing a
| software implant on the device itself, but I suspect often
| these things are not necessarily as transparent as they should
| be even if done server-side.) This means there is potential of
| a conflict of interest here, and deferring to a third party
| solves that.
| chews wrote:
| it's to maintain the legality of the arms-length ability to do
| jailbreaky like thinks when a 3 letter agency asks.
| illwrks wrote:
| It seems sensible to send people to the appropriate avenue for
| support, they have no idea how someone has been compromised and
| by taking ownership it becomes their problem.
|
| If someone breaks into your house do you call the builder for
| help?
| Drakim wrote:
| > If someone breaks into your house do you call the builder for
| help?
|
| If they constructed and installed the locks, and a weakness in
| the locks appears to have been the entry point for the break
| in, then yeah maybe?
| exe34 wrote:
| no, you call the police and your insurance company. the
| insurance company might enquire with the builders on who's at
| fault. hope that helps.
| illwrks wrote:
| There are weaknesses in everything around you. If apple were
| to be the owner of the issue then what's to stop apple
| covering it up? It's better for a third party to support,
| track and collate the issues and then for that knowledge to
| be addressed by Apple, or any other tech company.
|
| Apparently quantum computing is around a decade away, when
| that happens I've been told you can say goodbye to all
| privacy at that point.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Damn builders used _glass_ for my windows. Don 't they know
| how easy that is to break?
| starkrights wrote:
| Even if you do go to the builder, what are they going to tell
| you other than "yup. Lock got busted: here, here, and here,
| you should probably call the <people who investigate break
| ins for a living>"?
|
| I feel like the notification already does exactly that, no?
| "Hey, your phone looks busted, go call the <people who
| investigate sophisticated cyber surveillance targeting for a
| living>."
|
| And from the angle of "yeah you guys installed the locks
| wrong and they just opened the door, you should fix that"-
| does anyone reject the idea that the vuln would get reported
| to Apple, and that they'd be on it like crazy?
| scosman wrote:
| And the locks can be remotely patched to remove the
| weakness... seems fair.
|
| Not the builder, but calling the lock maker for sure.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Most of the roles in this house break-in analogy are Apple.
| They control the hardware, the OS, the app store, etc. They
| sell the devices & _also sell support_. This vertical
| integration in part defines their "it just works" marketing.
| It's perfectly reasonable for folks, including Harris' security
| team, to call Apple first, and mocking people for thinking
| Apple can/should field calls in this scenario is needlessly
| callous. (Yes, it's also reasonable for Apple to tell people to
| go to a trusted 3rd party, too)
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The big takeaway from this article:
|
| > All the experts TechCrunch spoke with strongly recommend
| turning on Lockdown Mode if you think you may be a target,
| especially if you are a journalist, human rights defender, or
| dissident.
|
| What does Lockdown Mode do?
|
| > When someone enables Lockdown Mode, some Apple apps and
| services work differently. For example, most attachments and link
| previews are blocked on iMessage, FaceTime calls from unknown
| contacts are filtered, location information is removed from
| shared pictures and certain fonts on websites are prevented from
| loading.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/07/apple-says-it-is-not-aware...
| dave4420 wrote:
| IIRC, it also disables the Javascript jit compiler and
| configuration profiles.
| anonnon wrote:
| testing shadow ban
| octokatt wrote:
| ?
| latexr wrote:
| You're not shadow banned. You'll probably get this comment
| flagged, though.
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