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ElcomSoft Claims It's Able to Recover Deleted iCloud Notes Well Past Apple's 30-Day Window

Alrescha said:
Elcomsoft is desperately trying to make a feature look like a flaw.

I suggest that Apple's intent is to let customers know that they have a *minimum* of thirty days to change their mind about deleting a note. To turn this around and try to claim that it is a guarantee that deleted notes will be purged at the thirty-day mark is a stretch.

It is perfectly reasonable to interpret "after thirty days" as "no sooner than thirty days".
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Let's assume Elcomsoft can restore deleted notes on their phone. The question is: Can they restore delete notes on _my_ phone? If they can, can they see _undeleted_ notes on my phone? If it is locked? What kind of access do they need to my phone to do this?
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Michaelgtrusa said:
This means they broke into iCloud.
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Absolutely not. If they broke into iCloud, the BIG news would be that they could read everyone's notes. And the tiny tiny side note would be that they could also read everyone's deleted notes.

It seems that their "news" is that when they had complete access to notes that were not deleted (which includes notes deleted 28, 29, or 30 days ago), they could also access notes that were deleted 31 days ago. I'd worry about the notes that were not deleted first.
 
gnasher729 said:
The question is: Can they restore delete notes on _my_ phone?
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Why is this the question? Elcomsoft has discovered one thing: Apple does not flush deleted notes after exactly thirty days. Whether Apple claims that they would do this is up for debate. Apple says "after thirty days". Thirty-one days is after thirty days, so is thirty weeks.

Regardless, if the note was not a security issue at thirty days, it does not magically become one at thirty-one.

A.
 
They have zero clue about large scale data repository system. Even in a simple repository that designed to serve 100,000 users, any data will not be deleted immediately from the repository; they will be marked as disposable, and will only be purged when necessary in large amount. What they accused is just like a group of children good at playing Lego, and claims that the way they design One World Trade Center was wrong.
 
Alrescha said:
Elcomsoft is desperately trying to make a feature look like a flaw.

I suggest that Apple's intent is to let customers know that they have a *minimum* of thirty days to change their mind about deleting a note. To turn this around and try to claim that it is a guarantee that deleted notes will be purged at the thirty-day mark is a stretch.

It is perfectly reasonable to interpret "after thirty days" as "no sooner than thirty days".

A.
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Five years though? That has got to be a flaw.
 
Alrescha said:
I suppose we must agree to disagree.

I think that if you have a document that can somehow become a security problem on day 31 (or week 31), then it should not have been in the cloud in the first place.
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Well, let's say I put my plans for robbing a bank into Notes. Then I robbed the bank and I deleted the notes. 25 days later the police figures out I might have been the robber, and they try to get their hands on my phone. I pray that it will take them longer than 5 days to get a search warrant. They get it on day six. I'm safe! I deleted my bank robbing notes 30 days ago, they are gone! Alas, things go wrong, and I curse Apple from my cold jail cell...
 
gnasher729 said:
Well, let's say I put my plans for robbing a bank into Notes. Then I robbed the bank and I deleted the notes. 25 days later the police figures out I might have been the robber, and they try to get their hands on my phone. I pray that it will take them longer than 5 days to get a search warrant. They get it on day six. I'm safe! I deleted my bank robbing notes 30 days ago, they are gone! Alas, things go wrong, and I curse Apple from my cold jail cell...
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I guess you'd better go rob the Apple Data Center to securely delete your smoking gun docs
 
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Regbial said:
I just want a good place to archive all my Notes. The ones that are no longer useful but I still want to keep, but don't want taking up space in iCloud/my devices.

Evernote is crap because it doesn't keep all of the formatting or photos (I believe?), or the metadata. (the date the note was created)
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You could always try printing them - yes I know, what a profound revelation! Thank me later.
 
radioisotope said:
Lets face it people, no data truly gets deleted. If you're really concerned about privacy, dont use any electronic device.
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This is a bit of an exaggeration. More like "you can't trust anyone to delete your data." If you're paranoid, encrypt it yourself, and don't trust these companies' promises. Don't even trust Telegram or Signal unless you're checking the public keys yourself. Truly secure end to end encryption is never something that magically operates without you doing anything.
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Macaholic868 said:
A wise man once told me if you don't want somebody to read it don't write it down. That's especially true in the digital age. I assume anything on my phone and computer is being viewed by somebody. If I have something important to communicate that I want kept secret it's through a face to face conversation.
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Then you're limited to only buying items with cash... There are some things not worth worrying about.
 
so I guess that explains one issue I had with iCloud - I mistakenly imported CR2 files from my DSLR to Photos app and then deleted them

not soon after that, I received e-mail that my iCloud account is maxed out... I was like what? I only have 100 photos there taken with my iPhone, how can I max out 5 GB with it

so I called Apple support and guess what - after 2 days they managed to recover all those CR2 files to my account so I had to delete them again, through iCloud website

meaning - those files were marked as deleted (and did not show in iCloud or anywhere else) but they were not really deleted from the Apple iCloud servers
 
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