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SEAR and the Apple team does an excellent job of security on iOS, and should be commended greatly on that. Not only are they willing to develop hardware featur

by Moral_ 11mo ago

SEAR and the Apple team does an excellent job of security on iOS, and should be commended greatly on that. Not only are they willing to develop hardware features and plumb that throughout the entire stack, they're willing to look at ITW exploits and work on ways to mitigate that. PPL was super interesting, they decided it wasn't 100% effective so they ditched it and came up with other thigs. Apple's vertical makes it 'easy' to do this compared to Android where they have to convince the CPU guys at QC or Mediatek to build a feature, convince the linux kernel to take it, get it in AOSP, get it in upstream LLVM, etc etc. Pointer authentication codes (PAC) is a good example, Apple said f-it we'll do it ourselves. They maintained a downstream fork of LLVM, and built full support, leveraged in the wild bypasses and fixed those up.

dagmx 11mo ago
One of the knock on benefits of this too is increased security across all platforms as long as someone exercises that code path on one of apples new processors with a hardened runtime. In theory it makes it easier to catch stuff that you can’t simply catch with static analysis and it gives you some level of insight beyond simply crashing.
pjmlp 11mo ago
Google could have added MTE for a couple of years now, but apparently don't want to force it on OEMs as part of their Android certification program, it is the same history as with OS updates.
- palata 11mo ago
  Don't the Pixels have MTE? Definitely GrapheneOS does, at least to some extent.
  - pjmlp 11mo ago
    Kind of, you need to enable it on developer tools, also Pixels are Google's, not the other OEMs. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mte https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mte https://source.android.com/docs/security/test/memory-safety/arm-mte https://source.android.com/docs/security/test/memory-safety/...
- kangs 11mo ago
  to be fair, most of MTE's benefit is realized by having enough users running your apps with MRE enabled, rather than having it everywhere. This is because MTE facilitate finding memory bugs and fixing them - but also consumes (physical!) space and power. If enough folks run it with, say Chrome, you get to find and fix most of its memory bugs and it benefits everyone else (minus the drawbacks, since everyone else has MTE off or not present). trade offs, basically. At least on pixel you can decide on your own
devttyeu 11mo ago
And after all that hardcore engineering work is done, iMessage still has code paths leading to dubious code running in the kernel, enabling 0-click exploits to still be a thing.
- aprotyas 11mo ago
  That's one way to look at it, but if perfection is the only goal post then no one would ever get anywhere.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- mikevm 11mo ago
  [dead]
- walterbell 11mo ago
  Disable iMessage via Apple Configurator MDM policy and enable Lockdown Mode.
  - Citizen8396 11mo ago
    I imagine the latter is sufficient. PS: make sure you remove that pesky "USB accessories while locked allowed" profile that Configurator likes to sneak in.
    - walterbell 11mo ago
      Need an open-source MDM profile policy linter.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  What's the dubious code? Running something in the kernel is unavoidable if you want to actually show stuff to the user.
alerighi 11mo ago
They do that now because they care about your security, but to make it difficult to modify (jailbreak) your own devices to run your own software that is not approved by Apple. What they do is against your interests, for them to keep the monopoly on the App Store.
- EasyMark 11mo ago
  It can be both things, security and user lock in, those are orthogonal goals.
chatmasta 11mo ago
I buy Apple products not just because they do a great job with security and privacy, but because they do this without needing to do it. They could make plenty of money without going so deep into these features. Maybe eventually it’d catch up with them but it’s not like they even have competition forcing them to care about your privacy. Their commitment to privacy goes beyond marketing. They actually mean it. They staffed their security team with top hackers from the Jailbreak community… they innovated with Private Relay, private mailboxes, trusted compute, multi-party inference… I’ve got plenty of problems with Apple hypocrisy, like their embrace of VPNs (except for traffic to Apple Servers) or privacy-preserving defaults (except for Wi-Fi calling or “journaling suggestions”). You could argue their commitment to privacy includes a qualifier like “you’re protected from everyone except for Apple and select telecom partners by default.” But that’s still leagues ahead of Google whose mantra is more like “you’re protected from everyone except Google and anyone who buys an ad from Google.”
- OptionOfT 11mo ago
  What is non-private about Wi-Fi calling?
  - chatmasta 11mo ago
    If you have it enabled, then every thirty seconds (regardless of whether you’re actively on a call), your phone will make a request to a signaling server owned by your mobile ISP. So if you’re on T-Mobile and traveling in some other country with no cell service, but you’re connected to WiFi, then T-Mobile will see your public IP address. (IIRC, this also bypasses any VPN Profile you have enabled on your device, because the signaling system is based on a derivative of IPSec that could have problems communicating over an active VPN tunnel.) I found out about this when I was wiresharking all outbound traffic from my router and saw my phone making these weird requests. Apple actually does warn you about this in the fine print (“About WiFi calling and privacy…”) next to the toggle in Settings. But I didn’t realize just how intrusive it was. I know my mobile ISP can triangulate my location already, but I don’t want to offer them even more data about every public IP of every WiFi network I connect to, even if I’m not roaming at the time.

by Moral_ 11mo ago

dagmx 11mo ago

One of the knock on benefits of this too is increased security across all platforms as long as someone exercises that code path on one of apples new processors with a hardened runtime. In theory it makes it easier to catch stuff that you can’t simply catch with static analysis and it gives you some level of insight beyond simply crashing.

pjmlp 11mo ago

Google could have added MTE for a couple of years now, but apparently don't want to force it on OEMs as part of their Android certification program, it is the same history as with OS updates.

palata 11mo ago
Don't the Pixels have MTE? Definitely GrapheneOS does, at least to some extent.
- pjmlp 11mo ago
  Kind of, you need to enable it on developer tools, also Pixels are Google's, not the other OEMs. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mte https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mte https://source.android.com/docs/security/test/memory-safety/arm-mte https://source.android.com/docs/security/test/memory-safety/...
kangs 11mo ago
to be fair, most of MTE's benefit is realized by having enough users running your apps with MRE enabled, rather than having it everywhere. This is because MTE facilitate finding memory bugs and fixing them - but also consumes (physical!) space and power. If enough folks run it with, say Chrome, you get to find and fix most of its memory bugs and it benefits everyone else (minus the drawbacks, since everyone else has MTE off or not present). trade offs, basically. At least on pixel you can decide on your own

devttyeu 11mo ago

And after all that hardcore engineering work is done, iMessage still has code paths leading to dubious code running in the kernel, enabling 0-click exploits to still be a thing.

aprotyas 11mo ago
That's one way to look at it, but if perfection is the only goal post then no one would ever get anywhere.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
mikevm 11mo ago
[dead]
walterbell 11mo ago
Disable iMessage via Apple Configurator MDM policy and enable Lockdown Mode.
- Citizen8396 11mo ago
  I imagine the latter is sufficient. PS: make sure you remove that pesky "USB accessories while locked allowed" profile that Configurator likes to sneak in.
  - walterbell 11mo ago
    Need an open-source MDM profile policy linter.
wat10000 11mo ago
What's the dubious code? Running something in the kernel is unavoidable if you want to actually show stuff to the user.

alerighi 11mo ago

They do that now because they care about your security, but to make it difficult to modify (jailbreak) your own devices to run your own software that is not approved by Apple. What they do is against your interests, for them to keep the monopoly on the App Store.

EasyMark 11mo ago
It can be both things, security and user lock in, those are orthogonal goals.

chatmasta 11mo ago

I buy Apple products not just because they do a great job with security and privacy, but because they do this without needing to do it. They could make plenty of money without going so deep into these features. Maybe eventually it’d catch up with them but it’s not like they even have competition forcing them to care about your privacy. Their commitment to privacy goes beyond marketing. They actually mean it. They staffed their security team with top hackers from the Jailbreak community… they innovated with Private Relay, private mailboxes, trusted compute, multi-party inference… I’ve got plenty of problems with Apple hypocrisy, like their embrace of VPNs (except for traffic to Apple Servers) or privacy-preserving defaults (except for Wi-Fi calling or “journaling suggestions”). You could argue their commitment to privacy includes a qualifier like “you’re protected from everyone except for Apple and select telecom partners by default.” But that’s still leagues ahead of Google whose mantra is more like “you’re protected from everyone except Google and anyone who buys an ad from Google.”

OptionOfT 11mo ago
What is non-private about Wi-Fi calling?
- chatmasta 11mo ago
  If you have it enabled, then every thirty seconds (regardless of whether you’re actively on a call), your phone will make a request to a signaling server owned by your mobile ISP. So if you’re on T-Mobile and traveling in some other country with no cell service, but you’re connected to WiFi, then T-Mobile will see your public IP address. (IIRC, this also bypasses any VPN Profile you have enabled on your device, because the signaling system is based on a derivative of IPSec that could have problems communicating over an active VPN tunnel.) I found out about this when I was wiresharking all outbound traffic from my router and saw my phone making these weird requests. Apple actually does warn you about this in the fine print (“About WiFi calling and privacy…”) next to the toggle in Settings. But I didn’t realize just how intrusive it was. I know my mobile ISP can triangulate my location already, but I don’t want to offer them even more data about every public IP of every WiFi network I connect to, even if I’m not roaming at the time.