"We consider allowing security researchers to verify the end-to-end security and privacy guarantees of Private Cloud Compute to be a critical requirement for ongoing public trust in the system. Traditional cloud services do not make their full production software images available to researchers — and even if they did, there’s no general mechanism to allow researchers to verify that those software images match what’s actually running in the production environment. (Some specialized mechanisms exist, such as Intel SGX and AWS Nitro attestation.)
When we launch Private Cloud Compute, we’ll take the extraordinary step of making software images of
every production build of PCC publicly available for security research. This promise, too, is an enforceable guarantee: user devices will be willing to send data only to PCC nodes that can cryptographically attest to running publicly listed software. We want to ensure that security and privacy researchers can inspect Private Cloud Compute software, verify its functionality, and help identify issues — just like they can with Apple devices."
Our commitment to verifiable transparency includes:
- Publishing the measurements of all code running on PCC in an append-only and cryptographically tamper-proof transparency log.
- Making the log and associated binary software images publicly available for inspection and validation by privacy and security experts.
- Publishing and maintaining an official set of tools for researchers analyzing PCC node software.
- Rewarding important research findings through the Apple Security Bountyprogram.
Every production Private Cloud Compute software image will be published for independent binary inspection — including the OS, applications, and all relevant executables, which researchers can verify against the measurements in the transparency log. Software will be published within 90 days of inclusion in the log, or after relevant software updates are available, whichever is sooner. Once a release has been signed into the log, it cannot be removed without detection, much like the log-backed map data structure used by the Key Transparency mechanism for
iMessage Contact Key Verification.
As we mentioned, user devices will ensure that they’re communicating only with PCC nodes running authorized and verifiable software images. Specifically, the user’s device will wrap its request payload key only to the public keys of those PCC nodes whose attested measurements match a software release in the public transparency log. And the same strict Code Signing technologies that prevent loading unauthorized software also ensure that all code on the PCC node is included in the attestation.
Making Private Cloud Compute software logged and inspectable in this way is a strong demonstration of our commitment to enable independent research on the platform. But we want to ensure researchers can rapidly get up to speed, verify our PCC privacy claims, and look for issues, so we’re going further with three specific steps:
- We’ll release a PCC Virtual Research Environment: a set of tools and images that simulate a PCC node on a Mac with Apple silicon, and that can boot a version of PCC software minimally modified for successful virtualization.
- While we’re publishing the binary images of every production PCC build, to further aid research we will periodically also publish a subset of the security-critical PCC source code.
- In a first for any Apple platform, PCC images will include the sepOS firmware and the iBoot bootloader in plaintext, making it easier than ever for researchers to study these critical components.
The Apple Security Bounty will reward research findings in the entire Private Cloud Compute software stack — with especially significant payouts for any issues that undermine our privacy claims.
Es gibt mittlerweile viele technische Kniffe, die das verhindern. Auch verschlüsselte Netze, die eine sicherere Nutzung erlauben. Aber klar, das muss halt auditiert werden. Bin gespannt ob da noch was kommt hinsichtlich Apple Intelligence.
