Comment by kornhole
2 years ago
Who had motive to target Russian government officials, knowledge of the attack vectors, history of doing so, and technical and logistical ability to perform it leads Kaspersky and myself to the only rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit. I assume they only use and potentially burn these valuable methods in rare and perhaps desperate instances. I expect the Russian and Chinese governments' ban on use of Iphones will not be lifted and expand to other governments. Similarly to how the sanctions have backfired, this tactic will also backfire by reducing trust in Apple which is the core of their value proposition.
This looks like a typical modern security hole. There’s a giant stack of layers of unnecessary complexity, and all of them are garbage. The composition is also garbage.
All the NSA needs to launch attacks like this is to get a bunch of mediocre engineers to layer complexity atop complexity. They don’t need Apple to know about the attack.
Honestly, they probably didn’t actually have to do anything to get Apple (or any other large company) to self-pwn itself by hiring and promoting engineers and project managers for adding features, but not for improving product stability or software correctness, or deleting forgotten legacy cruft.
Anyway, the most effective approach to sabotage is to be indistinguishable from incompetence, so it’s hard to say if the people responsible for the vulnerability chain were working with the NSA or not.
You make a good point that a team of mediocre engineers could be responsible for the vulnerabilities. Those doing code review and change control would also need to be mediocre. It could be a combination of compromised and mediocre coordinated by a manager who is in service of the apparatus. Knowledge of the operation would better not go all the way up the ranks to keep it quiet.
leads Kaspersky and myself to the only rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit.
Kapersky reaches no such conclusion. That's from an FSB release.
It is true that Kaspersky by policy does not make attribution without concrete proof. It is the responsibility of intelligence agencies to make the call based on preponderance of evidence. The video linked above leads suspicion to a very few options. The attacker left a list of Apple ID's in the code in one place to check against. Kaspersky provided them to Apple, and Apple did not respond with any details about the users of those Apple ID's. One of the main vulnerabilities has been available for over ten years.
What is more true is that the article posted explicitly says the exact opposite of what you suggested upthread - a fact you should acknowledge.
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This is a complete lie.
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> leads Kaspersky [..] to the [..] rational conclusion: that Apple cooperated with the NSA on this exploit
doesn't the article states precisely otherwise? that while the FSB accuses Apple of cooperation, Kaspersky does not have any reason to believe so, especially since it does not look like any known state actor.
Kaspersky can't prove anything so they opted to present the facts. They didn't state any opinion about who they believe is behind the incident.
Kaspersky only said they could not prove it. They did not make conclusion but laid out the evidence.
How did sanctions backfire?
Germany's economy shrunk last year while Russia's grew. Dedollarization has accelerated which will impact the US not immediately but in near future.
You are talking about an unsustainable war economy that is overheating. Soaring inflation, brain drain and a falling ruble are only just the short term phenomena.
--> https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/russian-war-economy-is...
If you would truly believe what you say, you should convert all your savings from dollar to rubles. No serious economist would think that doing so would be a masterstroke though.
To be fair, other European countries are doing better. It's a Problem specific to Germany and their mishandling of the energy shock.
the dollar as the reserve currency already has a serious impact on the US (ie. the big upside is that it allows the US to borrow for very cheap, but the nasty downside is keeping the purchasing power of the USD artificially high, which is not great for the non-finance sectors of the US, not great for people who work in those sectors, and double-plus-not-great for US exports [which are not the dollar itself]), basically it's the "natural resource curse" again
that said, dedollarization is unlikely even in the mid-term https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/threats-to-the-dollar-are-just...
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That’s only “rational” for kaspersky bc in their world they can’t function without having actual intelligence operatives on staff. I seriously doubt nsa needed help here
My adjacent conspiracy theory is that the NSA and other state agencies do both original research and pay hackers for exploits that Apple hasn’t yet discovered.
The Darknet Diaries episode "Zero Day Brokers" goes into this. Apparently Argentina hosts a lot of outsourced exploit development. Here's the transcript: https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/98/
They have the budget to do both easily.
Like how the NRO used to design and launch satellites that cost more than aircraft carriers but are now working closely with private companies like Maxar to find more economical solutions.
https://www.maxar.com/press-releases/nro-awards-maxar-a-10-y...
Thing is the fundamental laws of physics give us a good idea as to the capabilities of the NRO given a certain launch platform. Like how when scientists in the late 70s were figuring out the best telescope they could launch they ended up with almost the exact specs of the Keyhole spy satellites, a spare of which became Hubble.
but why pay hackers to try to find a backdoor when you can just walk in the front door and use the carrot and stick to get what you want?
Here's my serious answer that still works if you hate Apple.
Your question assumes two things: (1) That Apple intentionally leaves vulnerabilities in the stack, and (2) that Tim Apple is occasionally willing to share this candy with governments.
Having worked at Apple, I don't believe (1) can be true. Not only is it extremely unlikely that it could be kept a secret, but Apple's thing is "obsessive control", a mindset borne of organizational PTSD which originated with its near-death experience in the mid-to-late 90s. The Apple I know would not risk intentionally leaving back doors unlocked for enemies to find and leverage.
As for (2), the existence of a "Binder of Vulns" by nation-states would expose Apple to existential risk. It's possible that it could be kept secret within Apple's walls if it were never used, but once shared with a government it could not be contained. The splash damage of such a discovery could easily kill Apple.
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This happened at a company I worked at so it’s not out of the question. I figured it out by reverse engineering and quit on the spot. They tried to tell me I’d never work again if spying on users was a dealbreaker. They showed me a natsec slide deck that identified other collaborating companies as a way of making their point. Among them was Apple.
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