And Google Project Zero won't get them.

https://twitter.com/benhawkes/status/1286021329246801921

> It looks like we won't be able to use the Apple "Security Research Device" due to the vulnerability disclosure restrictions, which seem specifically designed to exclude Project Zero and other researchers who use a 90 day policy.

Goddammit, 90 day policy and reasonable rewards would strengthen their security and gain the trust of their advanced users.

For some reason this ridiculous restriction reminds me when Apple sued Samsung because their phones had round corners.

Apple sued Samsung because Samsung had aspirations of being Apple.

Rounded corners are the after-the-strategic-decision legal justification.

Frankly, I think Apple sued Samsung because Steve Jobs was still CEO at the time, and he sometimes acted emotionally instead of rationally.

Advanced users that want a secure device require devices that can be reinitialized to a known state without external input.

This is no longer possible on any phone, tablet, or computer Apple sells: all require online activation with device-specific info. There is no way to put the device back into a known state offline or without Apple having an opportunity to tamper with it (or be forced to tamper with it).

> This is no longer possible on any phone, tablet, or computer Apple sells

It is still possible on all of their computers, just not their phones or tablets. Intel Macs (which are still being sold in large numbers) can always be wiped and restored from USB without an internet connection, and Apple Silicon Macs can do it if you set the boot-loader to "Reduced Security" mode.

This is a false statement. Intel macs have the T2 boot security chip, which requires online activation to be able to access the internal disk after a full system wipe. The M1, even in reduced security mode, also requires online activation after a full system wipe. I've tested this this week; if you know of something I'm missing please tell me the exact steps to take to wipe and reinstall a T2/M1 mac offline, as I am confident now that it is not possible to do so.

I would love to be wrong about this.

This is the case even if you have a full offline boot/restore USB.

I have a post coming out today about just this, and how it renders all current macs unsuitable for long term offline/airgap applications.

These are just phones that you are officially permitted to attach a root shell and kernel debugger to, like to any other device that's not an iPhone. Researchers have been working around that for years by using private jailbreaks / exploits to get similar levels access, and with checkm8/ktrw you yourself can get similar access to any vulnerable iPhone 7/8/X.

No sources or structure layout or symbols, so you're still stuck waddling through megabytes of compiled code to reverse-engineer everything from scratch.

It's Apple drumming up absolutely nothing, and from my point of view it's mostly a PR stunt.

> It's Apple drumming up absolutely nothing, and from my point of view it's mostly a PR stunt.

Well, I don't think it's quite "nothing". Newer phones don't have access to checkm8, and getting a private jailbreak or exploit working can be non-trivial. And in some cases, researchers may need to avoid reporting that exploit to Apple in order to keep using it.

It's a good step. It's just not sufficient, especially given all the other restrictions.

> And in some cases, researchers may need to avoid reporting that exploit to Apple in order to keep using it.

And this will continue to happen until Apple just starts selling the damn things to anyone who wants them, instead of trying to gatekeep them to people who are playing by their ridiculous security disclosure rules.

Right! It would solve so many issues! Put them on an unlisted page of your online store, charge a 50% markup over a normal iPhone, make the boot screen bright red, and do something ugly and obvious with the phone's exterior.

Sure, some crazy people who aren't security researchers will probably buy them too and use them as daily drivers (I'd probably be one of them). So what? I don't understand why Apple feels the need to hold this stuff so close to their chest. Everyone in this scenario knows exactly what they're buying.

> No sources or structure layout or symbols…

Oh, that's a shame. The slide in the referenced tweet says, "advanced debug capabilities", so I'd assumed that's what it meant. I wonder what else that could mean?

The ability to attach a debugger to the kernel. No, really, that’s “advanced” for an iOS device, because normally you don’t get to do anything even close to that. You can’t even debug userspace processes that aren’t ones that you put there yourself (as a developer writing apps) on normal iPhones.