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Private Cloud Compute Security Guide

(security.apple.com)
398 points djoldman | 1 comments | 06 Nov 24 13:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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solarkraft ◴[06 Nov 24 15:40 UTC] No.42063965[source]▶
Sibling comments point out (and I believe, corrections are welcome) that all that theater is still no protection against Apple themselves, should they want to subvert the system in an organized way. They’re still fully in control. There is, for example, as far as I understand it, still plenty of attack surface for them to run different software than they say they do.

What they are doing by this is of course to make any kind of subversion a hell of a lot harder and I welcome that. It serves as a strong signal that they want to protect my data and I welcome that. To me this definitely makes them the most trusted AI vendor at the moment by far.

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tw04 ◴[06 Nov 24 15:59 UTC] No.42064286[source]▶
As soon as you start going down the rabbit hole of state sponsored supply chain alteration, you might as well just stop the conversation. There's literally NOTHING you can do to stop that specific attack vector.

History has shown, at least to date, Apple has been a good steward. They're as good a vendor to trust as anyone. Given a huge portion of their brand has been built on "we don't spy on you" - the second they do they lose all credibility, so they have a financial incentive to keep protecting your data.

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1. abalone ◴[07 Nov 24 17:22 UTC] No.42078686[source]▶
> As soon as you start going down the rabbit hole of state sponsored supply chain alteration, you might as well just stop the conversation. There's literally NOTHING you can do to stop that specific attack vector.

Just want to point out that Apple has designed in a certain degree of protection against this attack, and they talk about it![1]

In a nutshell they do two things: supply chain hardening and target diffusion. Supply chain hardening involves multiple verification checkpoints. And target diffusion greatly limits the utility of a small-scale compromise of a few nodes, because users are not partitioned by node. Together these mean the entire system would have to be compromised from manufacturing to data center and across all or most nodes. Which is certainly possible! But it's a significant raising of the bar above your "run of the mill" state-sponsored shipment interdiction or data center compromise.

[1] https://security.apple.com/documentation/private-cloud-compu...