iCloud for Windows Users Complain of Corrupted Videos, Photos From Strangers

[Shirasaki]

iCloud Photos ARE end-to-end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

How do you verify it? You can’t. Thus you can’t trust.

 

[Mr. Heckles]

iCloud Photos ARE end-to-end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

They are not. If you look at Keychain, Apple Card, Health data, home data, and others in that area, it says end or end encrypted. Photos, back up, contacts, bookmarks, and others do not say end to end.

A link that explains it.

If the photos were e2ee, this wouldn’t have happened.

 

[avtella]

Who cares it's Windows. 🤮

You would care if your photos go to some random person lol, and it’s very possible. You really didn’t think it through before hitting the send button did you.. What if the guy whose photos showed up in my iCloud account didn’t even have a Windows device.. ie someone like you.

 

[Krypton Deer]

From the thread, users have seen random families, children, soccer games, and other similar photo content.

THIS IS BAD 🤡

 

[adib]

Just when you think Apple's utterly incompetent engineers can't get any worse, they reach a new low.

Showing users resources that belong to a different user is the number one most catastrophic fail you can possibly have in a multiuser service. They should be fined out of the eyeballs and NEED TO FIRE the engineering/product manager(s) that presided over such a disaster.

I should point out that, at least in the EU, a data breach of that magnitude should alone warrant a substantial fine.

Horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. This just doubles me down on the "my current Mac and iPhone are the last pieces of Apple hardware I'll buy" stance - their software is just utter, utter junk now. It's not worth the money or the stress.

Any EU resident can use this to bring Apple to court should they are affected.

 

[Krypton Deer]

When prioritizing bugs to fix, a crash is often categorized as critical.
But mixing Cloud data with other users... this is even more critical than critical. Is there a word for it?

On a scale of 1-10, this breaks the scale 💩

 

[Mousse]

If it’s a server-side issue, it would also affect Mac, iOS, iPadOS, AppleTV users.
If not, there has to be something else causing this… A Proxy/cache server from an ISP or from Apple themselves?

It cannot possibly be ISP, since it's supposedly end to end encryption. The only two points of encryption/decryption is you and Apple. We can eliminate you as the source of how other people's photos got on your phone. This 100% Apple's servers.

 

[sirozha]

Of course it's not. I'm just happy with not using iCloud anymore. What NAS are you using?

QNAP. My first NAS was a Pug.

 

[JKAussieSkater]

It makes you wonder if Apple really encrypts your iCloud data as they claim.😐 Must be some easy to break encryption key if there's cross contamination of iCloud photos.😑 Apple's security measures ain't measuring up, IMO.

If everyone’s iCloud photos are encrypted with unique keys, yet this leak happens, I suspect that the culprit is poor cache flushing on Apple’s servers exploited by a bug in the video processing code on Apple’s servers.

Basically a memory leak, and therefore acquiring the images/video frames from other iCloud libraries is a chance event rather than a deliberate API loophole.

But we’ll never know until Apple releases a statement explaining the nature of the leak.

 

[Mousse]

It's possible that the Windows client is sending a corrupt request and therefore getting corrupted results. I don't expect much else from Windows. Garbage in, Garbage out.

I don't know which is more worrisome, you thinking it's a client side error. Or you thinking Apple's encryption is so pathetic that the same key can decrypt multiple encryption?

 

[JosephAW]

Too bad we won't hear from Phil, he deleted his account.

 

[insomniac86]

Windows issue.

This is why you don't use Windows.

Errrr... This is why you shouldn't comment when you lack basic knowledge of how systems work.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

Sounds like using AirDrop to share pix with people on trains, planes or busses, or at a game, concert or library . . . but without your permission.

 

[mectojic]

I wish we lived in a pre-cloud world.

 

[svish]

Hopefully Apple fixes it soon.

 

[Zachari]

Anyone know how to get my 30,000 photos off of iCloud? Apple has lost my trust with personal data. FFS, I trust Google more now.

 

[AppleEnthusiast1995]

This is not good.

 

[ghanwani]

Hopefully the strange photos don’t trigger a CSAM alert!

 

[Shirasaki]

Really sick of people blaming windows for this issue. Typical “see windows and blame windows fault“, just like those “I have nothing to hide” crowd. Rest assured, when disaster happens on YOU, we folks here are not gonna even spend one extra second sympathy for your misfortune.

Anyone know how to get my 30,000 photos off of iCloud? Apple has lost my trust with personal data. FFS, I trust Google more now.

You can’t. They are permanently in Apple server now. There are services for a selected few regions that can act on Your behalf to request for complete data removal, but those service providers can’t verify whether data is actually removed or not either. Apple can just say ”your data is gone“ without actually flushing your data out of their server farms. You never know.

 

[einsteinbqat]

Just let some news networks know of this. They’ll spin this thing for you, and Apple will have to do some damage control PR.

 

[ian87w]

Still no word from Apple? Not even "you're looking at your photos wrong"? That's really weird. Are their PR people not working or something? Seems like they have been doing really poor job lately.

Maybe there's some internal espionage going on? Someone should start working on a Netflix Original for this. 😁

 

[Havoc035]

O wow, if it is indeed the case that other people’s pictures are shown it would be really bad. I’d say emergency call an engineer at midnight level bad. That should be fixed ASAP.

 

[Ashbash75]

Anyone know how to get my 30,000 photos off of iCloud? Apple has lost my trust with personal data. FFS, I trust Google more now.

Get a Nas, e.g. Synology.

 

[Marshall73]

Are photos and videos converted to be PC compatible? If they are it could be an issue with this that the buffer is corrupted/not being flushed and combining many users images/videos during conversion. If it is this function Apple should be able to suspend it whilst the investigate. This could also be part of the new iCloud websites functionality doing the same thing. Either way, it needs to be offline till it’s fixed.

 

[Radeon85]

PULL THE CORD — NOW!!

Or — Don't Do Windows™.

If this is only happening with the iCloud for Windows client, then it suggests that it's a bug on the client side, and not on the server. If it was a bug on the server, we'd be getting the same reports from users of other platforms, namely macOS and iOS.

It's possible that the Windows client is sending a corrupt request and therefore getting corrupted results. I don't expect much else from Windows. Garbage in, Garbage out.

If it’s the client side on Windows causing the problem it’s still Apples crappy code to blame as they are the ones that written the program, not Microsoft. Honestly wouldn’t surprise me as their iTunes app is the buggiest, slowest app I’ve ever come across no matter how much processing power you throw at it.