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Apple Announces 'Groundbreaking' New Security Protocol for iMessage

HackMacDaddy said:
I hope they will also update iMessage with ui features. Whatsapp is just so much easier and intuitive to use, that‘s why nobody is using iMessage in Europe.
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Also because of less iphone penetration.
I see many more iphones, but I'd still say it's a 30/70 split in favour of android.
 
Yeah right. This is about boxing out competitors. Nobody is breaking in-transit encryption of messages. They're getting into devices themselves and examining the messaging history there.
 
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Timo_Existencia said:
In other words, if you're a buyer for a large enterprise concerned about institutional security.
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Yes, for the CEO's, Chief Scientist's, etc.'s computers, in certain enterprises. Not every large enterprise faces hackers with the resources of a nation state, and not every employee of a large enterprise that DOES is vulnerable to hackers with that kind of resources. The Russians would LOVE to hack Boeing, but aren't going to devote that kind of resources to WalMart... Hacking an accountant at Boeing won't get them what they want, either.

On the other hand, if the computational cost is reasonable, it makes sense to spread the technology widely...
 
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HackMacDaddy said:
I hope they will also update iMessage with ui features. Whatsapp is just so much easier and intuitive to use, that‘s why nobody is using iMessage in Europe.
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Originally people in Europe bought (yes, I paid three bucks) WhatsApp to get free texting, since text messages (SMS) used to be very expensive while data was cheap. This is the only reason it was widely adopted.
 
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If Apple stays this course I’m a customer for life. I was a BlackBerry diehard until I had to switch, and Apple was the logical choice. BlackBerry security was the best there was at the time. Now, Apple is BlackBerry on steroids.
 
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Also, re BlackBerry/Apple, I’ll say what I said about BlackBerry at the time. It’s either completely secure or completely compromised. Either way, my secrets are safe. If it’s completely compromised, I mean if NSA has full access, a user could probably commit a murder, and FBI, state police, and local police will gain nothing, because such access would not be revealed for the sake of a lowly murder.
 
HackMacDaddy said:
Oh yes it is much easier.
Just one example: sending a photo from your camera roll using the share button, you have to enter the recipients name manually or go through all of your hundreds of contacts and pick one. In Whatsapp you simply land in your recent chats overview and just click on an Avatar/Chat to send it. I can‘t wrap my head around the fact that I can not do this simplest and most logical thing within iMessage. There are dozens of more examples.
Of course cross platform is a big one but all my relatives have iPhones and still use Whatsapp. When asked why, they answer „because it‘s easier to use“.
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There are usability features that WhatsApp definitely does better.
 
This is all great news for the industry as a whole but when Messages is such a lacklustre IM experience compared to virtually every other platform, it's not going to make the splash they think it will.
 
This is nice, but the true weakness is always the human element. Someone has to be able to read the message eventually, no matter how duper-quanto-encrypted it is.

1708562352992.png


And since people seem to so frequently forget to source xkcd for some reason: https://xkcd.com/538
 
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MacProFCP said:
Governments around the world already rely on iPhones and iMessage for security. This will only enhance the adoption.

I think this is also a large push towards giving customers a reason to stick with iPhone after RCS introduction.

Of course, WhatsApp is far more popular and is controlled by the untrusted Meta.
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Says an American… pretty much every government in the world uses WhatsApp, dude.

In my country, you can get even a judicial order via WhatsApp. It’s accepted as evidence… it’s game over a long time ago.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
I thoroughly applaud the innovation but the big reward in this great security leap seems to be dependent on parties at BOTH ends of the chat using it.
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That is how messaging apps work...
DominikHoffmann said:
If so, I wonder, whether they will open-source the algorithm for world-wide auditing by security researchers.
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You can read some of the cryptographic proofs linked in the announcement from third party cryptographers.
cyrenaic said:
my assumption is that a request for the correspondences of the recipient would also include my responses. Is that so?
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Yes, if they have iCloud Backup enabled and haven't deleted your conversation history. The other party in a communication is always a risk factor. That's why even apps which don't do cloud backups, like Signal, offer expiring messages (Signal has "disappearing messages"), but this still relies on the other party not making their own copies, whether full backups or screenshots/pictures.
TwoBytes said:
I wish the Apple engineers had time instead to make Apple reply work on Apple Music vs the web!
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I imagine you're just venting, but there's absolutely no overlap between the cryptographers and security researchers involved in the iMessage security protocol update and Apple Music team lol. And you certainly wouldn't want those researchers working on Apple Music; it has enough issues on its own with professional software engineers involved.
MobiusStrip said:
Nobody is breaking in-transit encryption of messages.
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The concern is passive collection of messages for eventual offline decryption.
 
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Apple, as usual, has gimped itself by attacking third-party Message clients. This "security" move is just another ruse to box out would-be third-party clients. Apple is not the brightest.
 
WhatsApp has TERRIBLE security. Trusting Mark Zuckerberg not to snoop or leave himself a backdoor is like trusting a Siberian tiger not to eat you... I'd prefer green-bubble SMS, simply out of mistrust of Meta.

Signal is cross-platform and secure enough for all practical purposes.
 
MobiusStrip said:
Apple, as usual, has gimped itself by attacking third-party Message clients. This "security" move is just another ruse to box out would-be third-party clients. Apple is not the brightest.
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I must not be bright either because I have nodes what this means. Can you explain (a) what “gimped” means in this context, and (b) what I’m missing that turns this seemingly important security innovation into something that is bad for Apple and an attack on third-party message clients? Serious question.
 
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koil said:
Lol, it's already defeated by the fact that Apple have the encryption keys for automatically enabled iCloud backups for every user who hasn't opted into Advanced Data Protection. So 99% of the people you're iMessaging with will store everything they and you send in the backup that three-letter-organizations can demand Apple provide them with.

You could have literal unbreakable cryptography and it wouldn't matter when you store it unencrypted in those backups.
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Can you explain this? Are you suggesting this feature is useless unless 100% of iMessage users enable the ADP option that Apple provides to everyone? 🤔
 
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