Maybe it's just me but the idea that my computer lets Apple (+ any LE organizations) surveil my app launches seems so much scarier than any malware.
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If they know the hash of (let's say) a pr0n app which you run, then I'd say that's pretty damn sensitive information Apple is getting.
Think about someone having a dating app that would out them. Or a therapy app that they don't want people to know about. And that just scratches the surface.
And anyway, when we are talking about a phone, it would be literally impossible to run an app store without recording (and personally identifying!) that information. Maybe that's one more argument to allow third-party app stores, which I'm not against (though who knows if they're more trustworthy with that data?), but nevertheless.
My point is that in the grand scheme of privacy concerns, this is a very silly hill to die on. In the grand scheme of system reliability, on the other hand, it's totally legitimate to be upset that this effectively took down thousands of expensive workstations across the world for a few minutes.
Take a look at the macOS App Store medical section. Doing a quick scan of the top apps there is one app to help with some diabetes pump, one for a personal ECG machine, one that says it's a "mobile lactation consultant". Those can reveal a lot about a person that they might want to keep private. Searching "therapy" or "dating" also shows many results that people might want to keep private.
This is Apple we are talking about, which has the strongest privacy commitment of any device maker, and no advertising business outside of the App Store. Linking IP addresses to app certificate requests provides them zero benefit and exposes them to substantial brand damage.
I already expect the ISP to detect my Tor traffic.
But I didn't expect Apple, of all companies, to have a detailed audit trail of every time I've ever opened it, to the nearest minute.
Do I have proof that they could be ordered by a court to store it? Of course, that's how warrants work.
Do I have proof they are currently storing it? No, nor was that ever the claim.
And whether I'm taking a long or short lunch break, or lots of breaks. Whether I stay in bed until late, or work late at night. It's enough to predict whether I'm a "good" worker.
It also reveals whenever I travel, which coffee shops and libraries I frequent and what times of day. It also reveals what time I open any of several video conferencing apps.
And the sort of thing some HR would like to browse when assessing job candidates. They wouldn't need to ask "do you know X", they could just consult the Apple log of how often I run the relevant commands. Things like "we see you ran 'git' an average of 145 times per day last month, tell us more about that".
And whether I'm running tools I "shouldn't".
All that seems quite sensitive and personal to me.
If your employer is willing to be that invasive, they already have a much easier route for getting that information: forcibly installing surveillance software on your work machine.
> It also reveals whenever I travel, which coffee shops and libraries I frequent and what times of day.
How...? How would the binaries you're running have anything remotely relevant to say about this?
> They wouldn't need to ask "do you know X", they could just consult the Apple log of how often I run the relevant commands. Things like "we see you ran 'git' an average of 145 times per day last month, tell us more about that".
That's a pretty contrived use-case for a pretty significant and unscrupulous bit of data-sharing. From a PR perspective Apple would never intentionally and publicly share this data. So assuming this data is even stored anywhere after the check is complete, and assuming any personal identification is kept with it, both of which are huge ifs, that leaves a couple of possibilities:
- Hackers gain access to the data
- Government subpoenas the data
- Extremely lucrative contracts, probably from advertising companies, are enough to motivate Apple to sell the data despite the risk of a massive PR scandal
I don't see any of those falling under your proposed scenario of random employers casually perusing the logs.
The question was whether the information gathered is personal and sensitive.
The fact there is another way it could be gathered doesn't make the information less personal or sensitive.
> How...? How would the binaries you're running have anything remotely relevant to say about this?
Because your temporary IP address is part of the hash request, and that's usually enough to identify which major organisation's network you are on, not counting any geolocation.
Thus, coffee shop (which brand), library (government network), home or mobile, at least.
I expect the websites and services I'm using to have this when I'm using them. That's reasonable, I'm reaching out to them.
Apple itself is not a service I'm using constantly, so I don't expect it to be sent a minute-by-minute update of my movements whenever I'm doing work in a CLI, and happen to have wifi on.
(I don't use iCloud, btw. Perhaps people using iCloud expect activity to be streamed constantly.)
> From a PR perspective Apple would never intentionally and publicly share this data.
Again, the question was whether the information is personal and sensitive. That's a property of the information itself.
Not whether Apple intends to store it and share it.
Okay. You realize that you literally have to turn off the network connection completely to prevent dozens of companies from getting this information every waking moment? Windows and even Ubuntu constantly send back basic telemetry, not to mention the many more less-trustworthy apps that are refreshing in the background, the websites you interact with (even with ads/tracking blocked, the site itself still knows your IP address and time of access!), and so on.
Maybe it's not the exact point I was making originally, but my point now is that this is a ridiculous thing to focus on in the grand scheme of privacy concerns. It might be the single least-privacy-significant network request that any of your devices ever makes. Personally, if that's the only cost, I'll take the tradeoff for the security benefits. But even if I didn't feel that way, it's not what I would be spending my energy worrying about.
I do. (A look at my comment history would show I know quite a bit about networking.)
Again, the question being addressed, or actually the assertion being challenged, was: "hashes of the binaries I run don't exactly reveal any sensitive personal information about me"
I replied to show that those hashes do reveal that information.
But I threw in that how the hashes are sent (revealing the IP constantly) also reveals sensitive and personal information.
You might think that's inevitable, maybe so trivial it doesn't merit a mention. But in fact it isn't. It's purely a consequence of a technical decision. There are many ways Apple could perform the hash check without revealing your ephemeral IP to Apple.
Still, you asked what I thought was "how does sending your hash to Apple reveal where you go?".
Since you asked, I answered.
But perhaps I misunderstood your question, and you were asking how does Apple having the hash reveal where you are, not the act of sending it to them.
Fair enough.
1. Do you need an apple account to use the app store?
2. Do you need to provide personal information to use an apple account (I'm thinking at least enough to get a credit card working for app purchases/subscriptions)?
3. Is the data sent to this anti-malware service linked to your Apple account or an apple hardware id? (Has someone wiresharked the data to confirm/deny)
Big Sur prevents Little Snitch from blocking these system level connections, and these OS apps will also bypass any configured VPN.
2. Yes
3. I doubt it
But regardless of 3, simply by using the App Store at all (similarly to any other App Store out there) you're already giving them more information than they get from these hashes (at least for the apps that come from the store). I know for a fact that they keep a record of which apps you've downloaded there, associated with your account, because they check for updates and let you re-download them. As does the Android store. As does the Windows store.
Android, yes playstore requires an account but you can install an alternative store without signing in.