Fortunately, Apple regularly publishes their iOS Security Guide as criddel mentioned below and there is a vibrant Apple chip reverse engineering community that does microscope analysis of Apple's chips [1].

1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/11596/techinsights-confirms-a...

Apple has done a very good job with documenting iOS security:

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

If they included a management engine and produced a document like that, I'd be satisfied.

I always see this document linked to on HN even though it's a (relatively) high level description of what is happening on the device.

Besides, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple isn't just being "semi-open" with their security mechanisms. In other words, who is to say that there are no redundant, undocumented mechanisms in place?

But I will concede that Apple is ahead of everyone else in this regard. It's just that I think Apple being ahead doesn't mean that the information they're providing is enough.

You're right that a whitepaper isn't enough to be really sure. That takes disassembly of binaries and then you are still stuck with judging the trustworthiness of the hardware and I'm not sure how you solve that problem.

Apple is probably going to produce a similar document that details at a high level how the security works. If they follow the example that they set with iOS devices, what they won't do is provide the source code for these components.

I mean, of course, it's still their right to release or keep any source code they produce. We shouldn't be expecting them to release the source code, but even a whitepaper is better than what Intel is doing.