But no evidence was presented that any of the hardware companies were coordinating with the NSA. Given that jail breaking continues to exist, it is entirely possible that Apple and other companies are victims of security exploits identified by the NSA.
That being said, it would be good to get some companies on record on this.
He based this assertion on an NSA slide that said 100% of iPhones could be tapped. In the rest of the talk there was frequent mention (in bulletpoints or even more interestingly graphs) of efficacy rates, and as I recall most were between 50-80 percent. Apple was the only slide cited with 100% which is why this was noteworthy.
It's a resources/efficacy decision on the part of the NSA for targeting.
It's the same reason there were "no" mac viruses for many years: there were far more windows users to target.
Charlie Miller (that apple 0day guy) is ex NSA. In 2009 or so, he made huge waves with his iphone hacks.
I also find it appaling how widely revered charlie is. In this context, he is clearly an example of the kind of hacker we should be fucking shaming.
No more free bugs finds its logical conclusion. 0xcharlie: NSA stooge.
If you start your company today and put all your stuff on newly bought Apple machines (or Windows boxen), in case your stuff is stolen by the NSA or GCHQ or whoever in five years time, you will recieve (and deserve?) little compassion: When you complain, people will tell you that you should have known. After all, you started after the Snowden affair caused "all of us" to lose trust in these companies.
I'm starting to arrange myself with the "new" situation to maintain my sanity. If there is some life-or-death info, that should go into a crypto-container on an airgap linux box. For everything else, I'll have to become accustomed to the thought that there is someone out there who can get at it if they want and that all my efforts can make it only marginally more difficult for them.
"Here’s a problem: I don’t really believe that Apple didn’t help them."
That is a bullshit statement. It is pure speculation without a SHRED of facts to back it up.
There's a whole paragraph about that. You quoted part of it. It's not a minor point of the article. There's no smoking gun but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.
I disagree, the article implies that Apple might (probably?) is helping them with their spying. This is not a minor point for me. I think it's very important to expose which tech companies are betraying their customers, and conversely which are not.