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iCloud for Windows downloading other people's photos

377 points| whatever1 | 3 years ago |forums.macrumors.com

79 comments

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[+] est31|3 years ago|reply
In theory this is meant to be one of the advantages of end to end encryption: no more "accidental" leakage of user data between users, leakage in logs, etc (remember Facebook's logging incident? [0]). as it's only available on end user devices. And if you look at Apple's documentation [1], they say that iCloud is end to end encrypted. This is obviously not accurate as Apple keeps decryption keys for themselves. But this issue is even worse: here, the end to end encryption was circumvented in such a bad way that this bug could surface.

[0]: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/facebook-stored-hundreds...

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

[+] extr0pian|3 years ago|reply
This happened to me during a Google Takeout export when I was degoogling in late 2019. I recall going through some photos from the earlier 2010's and some random pictures of other people were popping up. About a month or so later I received an email from Google letting me know that some of my files may have been accidentally in other people's exports. Since then, I stopped using apps like Google Photos and cloud storage in general. If I do, my files will be encrypted before I upload them.

Here's the original story: https://9to5google.com/2020/02/03/google-photos-video-strang...

[+] ilikehurdles|3 years ago|reply
This should be a showstopper, critical issue. I’m surprised to see this still be in the wild after being posted on Friday of last week.
[+] greasyfullfryup|3 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised at all. I've reported literal malware in the App Store, with disassembly of the binary, etc. to them and Apple's "security" team did nothing. The inaction wasn't the worst part, it was their complete disinterest and lack of communication.

Google is even worse, you can't contact a human. Their app reporting process insisted I create a Google account and report it from within Android's App Store if I expected them to take action. I have better things to do than jump through unnecessary hoops.

[+] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
Imagine getting still frames of somebody else's bedroom photos or kinky selfies sent to a partner or something similar rendered into your own video.

This could be very much like the technical cloud-based version of the fictional Tyler Durden splicing dick pics into single frames of 35mm film movies.

Based on what people use phones for these days some sizable percentage of icloud synced photos have to be something you really wouldn't want to get out there to random other icloud users.

[+] lovehashbrowns|3 years ago|reply
Holy heck this is a bad one. That response from the security team is completely unacceptable. I wonder if there's a way to force this to happen, e.g. by modifying the file contents directly.
[+] sneak|3 years ago|reply
Reminder: Photos and videos in iCloud are not end to end encrypted (just like your device backup that contains your iMessage "e2e" keys) and are always readable by Apple (and thus FBI et al).

Apple is required to hand over data without a search warrant over 30,000 times per year to US authorities.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

[+] kls0e|3 years ago|reply
Is there a way to have new iMessage e2e keys generated after disabling iCloud device backup?
[+] astrange|3 years ago|reply
There’s nothing special about a “search warrant” compared to other equally valid forms of legal process.
[+] Jerrrry|3 years ago|reply
If this can happen accidentally, it can happen on purpose.

A glitch is just an exploit that just hasn't been sufficiently documented.

[+] Kibae|3 years ago|reply
Why aren't photos and files encrypted in the cloud? I feel like it should be standard for cases like this.
[+] Bilal_io|3 years ago|reply
It's Apple. As long as its users have the perception of security and privacy, they may not change anything.
[+] fulafel|3 years ago|reply
We have diluted the popular usage terminology so it's meaningless. Everyone ascribes the property "encrypted" to their service but you can't tell from that if they are just storing the key and the data next to each other in the database, or doing the equivalent with extra steps.

The important and hard part in crypto is key management, but that's considered too complicated a concept to explain to users.

[+] benhurmarcel|3 years ago|reply
They can't even consider encrypting them, since they are forced to scan for CSAM and the public overwhelmingly rejected on-device scanning. So their server needs access to the images.
[+] MBCook|3 years ago|reply
Maybe they are, but the gold returned from the sever isn’t.

When they tried to encrypt photos end-to-end much of HN (and others) flipped out and raised such a fuss they gave up.

[+] jeroenhd|3 years ago|reply
Probably because people lose keys, forget password, and lose their treasured family photos.

That said, the option should at least be available to those who know the benefits and accept the risks.

[+] goosedragons|3 years ago|reply
Anyone else think the "scanlines" in the video are not scanlines but actually data of some sort? They seem to have white/black bits. Suggesting it might be some sort of data the video codec displays that way.
[+] whatever1|3 years ago|reply
In a world of containers and micro services, I do not understand why we cannot have independent databases and buckets per user, specially if we are talking about sensitive data.
[+] tyingq|3 years ago|reply
I'm guessing it's an uninitialized buffer in a shared encoder instance, where independent storage wouldn't have helped much.
[+] jjtheblunt|3 years ago|reply
well clearly we can, and this is clearly a monstrous bug ?
[+] nhinck2|3 years ago|reply
Where do you keep the record of which container belongs to which user and how does that record avoid the same problem?
[+] languageserver|3 years ago|reply
There is absolutely no proof that these are images from other peoples iCloud accounts.

Assuming these are even from iCloud in the first place, they could have been their version of "stock photos".

Assuming these are from iCloud, could have been the user's previous deleted photos. Could also just be photos on their windows computer. So many options. Going straight for the most unlikely scenario is strange, and seems like people have an agenda.

[+] Aaron2222|3 years ago|reply
Stock photos had crossed my mind as a possibility as well, but I'd say it's unlikely to be previously deleted photos or from their Windows computer if they're seeing photos of kids they don't know.
[+] StanislavPetrov|3 years ago|reply
Another reminder that "the cloud" is really just someone else's computer.
[+] tibbydudeza|3 years ago|reply
I get the feeling that the folks working on the Windows/Android team at Apple are not highly regarded - get the sense of "folks working in the basement" - you can see it by the lackluster stuff they ship.
[+] layer8|3 years ago|reply
As a Windows/Android developer, you probably don't apply at Apple for a job, and as an Apple employee you're probably not too enamored with developing for Windows/Android.
[+] 6510|3 years ago|reply
One could argue that the response makes icloud illegal in the EU.
[+] mhitza|3 years ago|reply
All US operated websites are technically illegal in EU (due to the CLOUD Act). Practically, they are still used en masse. In theory the next iteration of the Privacy Shield (or whatever name they are going to give it this time around) and which EU-US should sign sometime next year should reconcile in some way the existing privacy issues where EU residents personal data does not have adequate privacy protection once it's touched by a US company.
[+] kylehotchkiss|3 years ago|reply
Has somebody tried emailing this to Tim? a note saying it was ignored by apple's security submission process would probably be a good addition
[+] s1mon|3 years ago|reply
I had another issue with iCloud and photo syncing being abysmally slow, and I ended up digging through LinkedIn and I found the director of engineering for photos at Apple. I messaged that person through LinkedIn, and ended up getting some very senior tech support people who helped go through my issues with me. I hesitate to post contact info, but just saying... it's possible if you are polite and can clearly articulate the issue to get someone like that to help really escalate the support.