New from Apple: “Advanced Data Protection”

Cmaier

Cmaier

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Advanced Data Protection is launching today in the latest iOS 16.2 beta. It will be available to everyone in the United States by the end of this year, with an expansion to the rest of the world slated for early 2023.
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Alright, y’all get to beta test it for me.
 
Pumbaa said:
Alright, y’all get to beta test it for me.
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Yeah, hard pass on early adoption of stuff like that by me! The last thing I want when I'm desperate to find something in my own data collection is a discovery that it's so encrypted even I can't unlock it.
 
lizkat said:
Yeah, hard pass on early adoption of stuff like that by me! The last thing I want when I'm desperate to find something in my own data collection is a discovery that it's so encrypted even I can't unlock it.
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Happened with an external hard drive of mine last month. The password somehow skipped getting saved in Keychain. 😂

I had to reformat the drive and recreate the contents. Made sure to manually set and save the passphrase the second time.
 
I can't test it because I would need to update all my devices, looks like. You have to setup a recovery method (either a contact - who has to accept an invitation - or a recovery hash code which you need to write down - or both) and update all your devices before it lets you turn it on.
 
I'm fine losing a text or missing a phone call due to beta bugs. That said, I'm not about to lose something like my entire photos collection if this goes poorly. I have no reason to expect it to go poorly. I also have no particular reason to rush into this. For once I'm happy to sit on the sidelines and watch. 🍿
 
lizkat said:
Yeah, hard pass on early adoption of stuff like that by me! The last thing I want when I'm desperate to find something in my own data collection is a discovery that it's so encrypted even I can't unlock it.
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Hey, I had a nice shiny new Air 2 to replace my iPad 1. It was awesome. Then I upgraded to, I think, iOS 9 or 10, and they changed the passcode 4 to 6. I used the fingerprint thing most of the time, but at some point I had to use the passcode, which was a modification of my favorite 4-digit code that I could not get right. Eventually i got stone locked out, and there is no road into a locked-out iPad.

I had to wipe the damn thing and start over. Fortunately, I had most of my important stuff on my Time Capsule where I could recover it (never have wanted to use iNimbus), but still was a big discomfort. Also, I discovered passcode options and switched to alpha, which is easier to remember.
 
I'll just say that I love how Apple protects your privacy, I always feel like my data is secure on all of their devices. This is another great step they're taking IMO.
 
Eric said:
I'll just say that I love how Apple protects your privacy, I always feel like my data is secure on all of their devices. This is another great step they're taking IMO.
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Don't get me wrong, I'll like it after someone else runs the betas... yeah I can be selfish. With encryption that's because of a "failure to unlock" experience something like what @Yoused lived through.

I lost the password for an encrypted disk image once on an external drive. I had thought I'd used a pw that's complex but that I had used on a few other such images in the past. It's possible I made a typo and repeated it during encryption, but whatever, I couldn't unlock that one disk image.

Fortunately I had most of the information on a separate drive that was encrypted with a different password that I had written down and stuck in a desk drawer (all this is the time before password manager application options). But the memory of that unhappy experience has stuck with me. It was a real pain in the neck to reassemble some of the info that i was missing after that data loss.
 
lizkat said:
Don't get me wrong, I'll like it after someone else runs the betas... yeah I can be selfish. With encryption that's because of a "failure to unlock" experience something like what @Yoused lived through.

I lost the password for an encrypted disk image once on an external drive. I had thought I'd used a pw that's complex but that I had used on a few other such images in the past. It's possible I made a typo and repeated it during encryption, but whatever, I couldn't unlock that one disk image.

Fortunately I had most of the information on a separate drive that was encrypted with a different password that I had written down and stuck in a desk drawer (all this is the time before password manager application options). But the memory of that unhappy experience has stuck with me. It was a real pain in the neck to reassemble some of the info that i was missing after that data loss.
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Yeah, I'll let others do that research for me too lol. When it's ready I'll definitely use it.
 
Eric said:
Yeah, I'll let others do that research for me too lol. When it's ready I'll definitely use it.
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And they will get it working so well that when it finally does fail you will be royally screwed.
 
Unsurprisingly the FBI is less than thrilled.


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Should be a fun fight.
 
Yoused said:
Well, the problem with backdoors is, all you need is a key.
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Yup. Which is why this fight will never be fully resolved as the two options are mutually contradictory. There’s no magical technique to allow only law enforcement with “good” (non-totalitarian) reasons and with a valid court order to access private data.
 
dada_dave said:
Yup. Which is why this fight will never be fully resolved as the two options are mutually contradictory. There’s no magical technique to allow only law enforcement with “good” (non-totalitarian) reasons and with a valid court order to access private data.
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IMHO, if someone asked for a backdoor, that someone is up to no good.
 
quarkysg said:
IMHO, if someone asked for a backdoor, that someone is up to no good.
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I can come up with whole bunch of non nefarious reasons why a back door would be useful, just sadly the list of nefarious ones is even longer and absolutely would happen - some sooner than others. I mean even if for the sake of argument I fully completely trusted the American FBI/law enforcement/government, and that’s a big ask, and I trusted Apple to build the impossible back door that no hacker either criminal or state backed would ever breach with keys that could never be stolen, the truth is that every government on Earth would demand the same from Apple. And the consequences of that should be pretty obvious, even to the FBI.
 
Love this. Great job Apple!

Cmaier said:
You have to setup a recovery method (either a contact - who has to accept an invitation - or a recovery hash code which you need to write down - or both) and update all your devices before it lets you turn it on.
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Pretty much like FileVault on macOS then.
 
dada_dave said:
I can come up with whole bunch of non nefarious reasons why a back door would be useful, just sadly the list of nefarious ones is even longer and absolutely would happen - some sooner than others. I mean even if for the sake of argument I fully completely trusted the American FBI/law enforcement/government, and that’s a big ask, and I trusted Apple to build the impossible back door that no hacker either criminal or state backed would ever breach with keys that could never be stolen, the truth is that every government on Earth would demand the same from Apple. And the consequences of that should be pretty obvious, even to the FBI.
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You hit the nail on the head. Very hard to build a backdoor that will only ever be used by the 'good guys' whatever 'good guys' means in this world of perspective.
My preference is not to build any backdoors to begin with and treat privacy as a fundamental human right.
 
tomO2013 said:
You hit the nail on the head. Very hard to build a backdoor that will only ever be used by the 'good guys' whatever 'good guys' means in this world of perspective.
My preference is not to build any backdoors to begin with and treat privacy as a fundamental human right.
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Time will tell if Apple has actually done what the said they've done. They still could have a copy of the decryption key on their "lawful access" servers and only provide the access to the US intelligence agencies. (that, at least, would keep our "trusted" allies from leaking the information *cough* France *cough*).

Me, I really don't care if law enforcement can gain access to my devices - nothing to hide - and I'm not a conspiracy nut. :)

(and I also invested just over 8 years of my life at BlackBerry - where we did exactly that for law enforcement).
 

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