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A comment on iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means for Mobile Forensics. Parent comment

Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by conradev on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @01:31PM (#17022777)
The files are still encrypted at rest (using convergent encryption) to obscure their contents from the underlying storage service, but Apple holds the keys:

> Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf (page 56)

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Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by yborg on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @02:22PM (#17023319)
>Apple holds the keys

Unless you live in China, in which case Apple and the Chinese government hold the keys.

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Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by threeseed on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @05:14PM (#17025193)
We don't know this to be the case.

Unless you some evidence to the contrary ?

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Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by simonh on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @06:25PM (#17025860)
The Chinese government made Apple hand over control ofiCloud infrastructure in China to a Chinese company. So those encryption keys stored in iCloud are now in the hands of aChinese company subject to Chinese government control.

Not exactly an ideal arrangement, but it was likely that or switch off iCloud in China, or pull out of China completely. Which to be fair Google actually did.

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Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by threeseed on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @09:46PM (#17026868)
Again. There is no evidence that has been presented to date that indicates that hardware keys were given to the Chinese government.

We suspect it may have happened. But nobody actually knows.

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Re:iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means ... by bad_user on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @03:35PM (#17024069)
Files encrypted at rest on Apple’s servers represents protection for Apple against external threats, not for the user.

These are security schemes that do not enhance the user’s privacy.

It’s cool that some companies are security conscious enough to do this, but for the user’s privacy remember that ... if it’s not end to end encrypted, it doesn’t matter for privacy, just for security and those two notions are very different ;-)

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