So in short: Apple has back doors that they claim aren't really back doors since only Apple apps can use them. If the NSA hasn't been using them already, it is only a matter of time.
As I understand it, there is more than just figuring out how it works; one also needs to have physical access to the phone and be able to imitate Apple cryptographically. Not out of reach for the NSA maybe, but not exactly typical hacker stuff.
No, SSL certs are using to sign packages and software too. And Apple would not have a root cert, their cert would be signed by a root CA, which could be used to sign other certs if it's tricked into thinking its' Apple requesting them (like in the recent Google cert example).
So one could impersonate a company if they have a cert that says they are that company.
You are conflating the CA system traditionally used on the Web with SSL itself. Apple does not depend on other certificate authorities to sign its software. Anybody can create their own root CA — it just won't be trusted by browsers out of the box.
No, it's about the browser CA system. I don't know exactly how Apple implemented their signing for iDevices, but it's a reasonable assumption that the certs need to be signed by Apple, and they didn't effectively hand the keys over to every registrar in the world.
They are likely using a plain-old SSL Cert signed by a plain-old public CA, which is how your computer would know if the executable appears to come from Apple or not.
First of all, code signing certificates are not "plain-old SSL certs". They're for code signing, not SSL.
Second, Apple includes their own root certificates in their own operating systems just like everybody else. I've personally implemented a code signing mechanism for a platform that had no root certificates except for those I personally generated (and still control).
The public CA system is just irrelevant here. It has nothing to do with anything.
Backdoors that require the user to unlock their device and have paired with a PC in the past.
If a paired PC is compromised (a trivial task for a sophisticated hacker or the NSA, if the millions of windows pc bot nets are evidence), and wifi sync is enabled, and the device is unlocked and in use, then the compromised PC could theoretically harvest personal information from the device without any warning or notification to the user.
IMO it seems like the only requirements to compromise someone's iDevice is A) they use their iDevice with a compromised PC, and wifi sync seems to make it all much easier.
Well, true, but copying personal data to the PC is exactly what sync is supposed to do - a good chunk of that data is actually synced with the computer, and the rest needs to be included in backups (which need to be able to be restored on other devices, so they can't be encrypted with a device-specific key). If Wi-Fi sync is enabled, all that needs to happen over Wi-Fi. So I'm not sure what Apple could do about it, other than make it harder to compromise Macs.
The part of this story I think deserves more attention is security against a sophisticated adversary who does not have the passcode or access to a paired computer. In this case, data protection should be effective (the data is encrypted with a key that requires going through the hardware AES engine to derive from the passcode, i.e. slow), but for some reason most data is apparently not protected. This doesn't seem hard to improve to me, and I'd like Apple to do so.
In other words, News flash: physical access allows an attacker in the know to compromise computer security. You laid it out, a minimum of 4 circumstances need to happen to allow these exploits to work.
If we're going to have "lawful intercept" legal requirement, I'd rather have the mechanisms require this type of intrusive action that require a warrant in most cases.
I was really hooked by this talk until he characterized supervision/enterprise enrollment as a "backdoor", and the more I read about it, the more bullshitty it really is.
Guess what. If you hacked into my Mac, then yes, you can see my pictures in iPhoto. As my iPhone keeps syncing to the Mac, yes, you'll be able to see the pictures from my phone. But you'll also be able to view my emails (from Mail on the Mac), all my documents, and install a key logger on my Mac and steal my bank credentials.
I get a notification asking if I want to trust the computer I've just connected to every time I connect, regardless if I've trusted it in the past or not.
