This is completely wrong. iCloud Backup does not have end-to-end encryption. Period.
"Apple may not be able to
listen in on your conversations, but they
can decrypt the messages stored in your backups,
because data in iCloud backups is not end-to-end encrypted.
1
And it’s not just iCloud backups. Here’s an incomplete list of data sources in iCloud that are
not end-to-end-encrypted:
iCloud backups
Messages (
de facto when iCloud Backup is enabled because the backup contains a decryption key for the messages)
Photos
Files in iCloud Drive
Notes
Contacts
Reminders
Calendars
Voice memos
Bookmarks (your Safari history and open tabs are end-to-end-encrypted)
Source:
Apple, iCloud security overview
In other words, if you use Apple services as intended and recommended by Apple, a large portion of your most sensitive data is in fact not securely encrypted. Both Apple and U.S. government agencies (and possibly other governments?) can potentially access it."
U Know? ✅Where is end-to-end encryption for iCloud? Click here to get more info
softbranchdevelopers.com
The source your are citing from apple is the exact confirmation of my point. Look at how the individual services interconnect and where each key for each service is stored. Yes, Apple can access some data, but "large portion" is a relative statement. And relative statements are often alarmist these days. "Large according to who?" should be the immediate follow up question. Let's be specific. From analysis of the services we can glean what Apple actually knows.
In the case of iCloud Backup the key for encryption is stored on our devices(s). It does not live on Apple's servers (except in the cased of iCloud Keychain). They cannot decrypt the backup data itself without this key. The transmission of this data is NOT E2E encrypted, this is true. Only the blob data for your backup is. This is why government officials work to unlock phones and other devices. It is the easiest way to get at this information.
In the case of iMessage the content of messages is encrypted with a key stored on our devices. It does not live on Apple's servers (except in the case of iCloud Keychain).They cannot decrypt the content of messages without this key. This is why government officials work to unlock phones and other devices. It is the easiest way to get at this information.
In both the above cases data such as time stamps, destination IP, source IP, message recipient, blob size, encrypted blob data, message signatures and checksums are NOT encrypted by our private keys. They are encrypted by Apple's keys or sent plain text. Apple has access to and can share all this information. However, content data is encrypted with our keys prior to Apple's keys to put the data on the wire. Apple never sees the content plain text.
A side note, the "key" for your iCloud Keychain is the iCloud password (you are only arguing the backups so I won't dig in too far here). Assuming Apple is not storing passwords plaintext anywhere and just a hash of it for auth this is secrecy that keeps passwords stored in iCloud secure. The backup key is stored encrypted with the iCloud password as the key on Apples server. Without they iCloud password they can not decrypt this data.
Going back to the data Apple can share, it is not insignificant. They have identity data and potentially data on who is contacted by each of us. Handing this to government officials can allow tracking of groups of people and contacts. It can be used for surveillance of the population of a state at large or an individual's private dealings. A warrant is required for the government to legally request this data in most democratic countries but that leans on how much we each trust our legal system and that's another topic.
Apple, however, can not pull this data from device backups. They can only pull it from their own logs. IMessage does have a separate "backup" of your most recent messages that get synced between machines. The same identity information above can be retrieved by Apple from this. But remember, your message is encrypted with your keys before it is sent to Apple. All they have is the encrypted blob of the content of your message.
In my previous post I said "privacy is maintained" and perhaps that could be ambiguous. I am a network protocol developer and I was thinking "privacy" in terms of packet privacy. These days auth/identity data is often something we would like to keep completely private as well. This is not kept private from Apple. Only our content is.
Backup included, metadata around iCloud is very accessible to Apple and whoever they choose to share it with. Apple does a reasonable job making sure that any actor in their systems can not access our content data (nor can a government they share the encrypted blobs with). But if the identifying metadata counts as a "large portion" then I guess I'm OK with Apple having that. Each person can decide whether they are comfortable here or not but I would argue we should dig in and understand exactly what is what to make a good call.
The Softbranch article doesn't do a service level analysis. From the start the concept of end to end encryption doesn't make sense in the context of a customer storing data with a provider, and they are trying to apply it as such. It only makes sense between customers communicating directly. End to end encryption is just a short hand for saying that the keys to encrypt and decrypt each live with the exact sender and receiver of intended data and ONLY those two. To do this analysis right we have to look at exactly where encryption keys are stored, who has access to them, and what they can decrypt. Softbranch failed to do this. This is what I have done above to prove that while the buzzword "end to end encryption" doesn't apply here the content is still secure.
If you disagree with the above I'll propose an experiment to be scientific about it. On a test device configure iCloud backup. Check your keychain and grab the key for iCloud backup. Hook the device up to the iOS debugger and step through the CFNetStream write calls to see your outgoing data before it is encrypted with Apple's keys (you won't be able to read it once it is encrypted with Apple's keys). Start the backup and examine what is sent. If you see your data clear text let me know and we'll have to go talk to Apple about this. I'll admit. I trust Apple is doing what they say here and have not done this particular experiment. (I also trust someone else HAS done this experiment and if it had gone wrong they would have called Apple out on it).
