Comment by walterbell

11 hours ago

  Apple’s new Secure Indicator Light (SIL) mechanism. When using the microphone or camera, the corresponding indicator dot is effectively rendered in hardware, making it a lot less likely that any malware or user space app would be able to access those sensors without the user’s knowledge.

If this mechanism isn't working as intended, Apple pays $100,000 to $2,000,000 bounty for bugs that breach security boundaries which protect sensitive user data or sandboxes.

https://security.apple.com/bounty/categories/

That's cool but someone needs to find said bugs and Apple is not exactly open for audit. Given the critical nature of smartphones, I think corps of this magnitude should be subject to oversight and clear and transparent external evaluation of such sensitive systems.