Apple's Tim Cook: 'There is no backdoor. The government doesn't have access to our servers'

[onehandle]

Source: Engadget

Apple isn't colluding with the NSA to hand over user data and CEO Tim Cook wants you to know that. In fact, Cook feels so strongly about this issue of security that he's gone on record saying the government would need "to cart [Apple's employees] out in a box" to get access to its servers. That choice soundbite comes from a sitdown interview, airing tonight on ABC, during which Cook elaborates on what he sees as public misperception stemming from the recent NSA scandal. To counter that, Cook said he's been "pushing very, very hard" for more transparency into Apple's internal practices, a move he hopes would help to set the record straight with the general public.



Read more: http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/24/apples-tim-cook-there-is-no-backdoor-the-government-doesnt

[jsr]

1. Sure.

[Brigid]

2. How does he know that?

It isn't as if the government would admit it if they did.

[FreeState]

4. Im pretty sure they can see who is accessing their servers n/t

[1000words]

3. Be it true or not, what else would he say?

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know for sure.

[woodsprite]

5. Well, THAT's a relief!!!

That means they shouldn't come knocking on our door for some stupid questions my son was asking Siri on his first phone. Both hubby and I heard him and were like "WHAT?". He was watching "Ghost Hunters" at the time and asked Siri if the video could be used as a thermal device. He meant "thermal imaging device" -- to photograph ghosts or detector to sense ghost energy or something. He got a weird message indicating that such info had been removed from the server.

Freaked us all out. He was almost crying when we told him that if the NSA visits him at school and calls him down to the principals office, maybe Verizon would be able to show them his history of watching Ghost Hunters, and Apple could give them a list of his totally dumb questions he's asked the phone since he got it, and they'll see he was just being a dufus.

Of course, we did get a weird call from the local police last night asking for a donation for their Fallen officer's and Victim's Assistance fund. I thought it was weird because they said they would have a local officer come to the house to pick it up rather than us mailing it in this time. I told them "Sorry, can't do a donation unless I can mail it in the form of a check." He did agree to that. Hmmmmm....

[ChromeFoundry]

6. Maybe not, but....

they sure as hell have access to all data to-and-from their servers. And if you think the government cannot spoof an IP Address to make sure Apple doesn't know whom is accessing their servers... they are sorely mistaken.

I think Tim Cook meant to say: "We did not 'purposely' write a backdoor into our servers for government access. We use a ton of open source code, including BSD Unix in all of our operating systems. This, including our encryption algorithms. So, we don't know what the government has access to."

[Sunlei]

7. I think they hand over our info to anyone who pays, actually WE should be paid for our info.

[blkmusclmachine]

8. How does he know ?!?!

[savalez]

9. Do you believe him?

If Google or Microsoft said the same thing would you believe them also?

Edit to add that I already know your answer to this. Your Apple worshiping is well known around here.

Yeah right... Whatever Crook, er I mean Cook.

[MannyGoldstein]

10. By law, wouldn't he have to say that even if it wasn't true?

This is twisted, twisted stuff.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

11. The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/the-nsa-reportedly-has-total-access-to-your-iphone/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[sir pball]

12. The inventor of OS X* begs to differ.

I'll take Ken Thompson's thoughts over just about anybody else's any day. His now-classic lecture on "trusting trust" outlined a devious, fairly simple, marvelous hack that involves (WARNING: HERE BE TECHNICAL GIBBERISH) patching the source for the compiler to add a backdoor, a secret user, to the login binary - and then adding another patch to the compiler itself, one that would recognize when it was building itself and slip the patch into the outputted compiler binary. The source code was then sanitized, leaving a theoretically undetectable (any debuggers or intrusion detection software needs to be compiled, and the compiler will break those too) breach that would propagate even through a complete build from source. About the only way to be be secure is to write a compiler yourself, directly in machine code, and then only build from vetted source (and that's assuming the NSA hasn't slipped a KTH hack into the chip hardware - entirely conceivable).

Which Apple isn't doing. Matter of fact, given the age and capabilities of UNIX, while it is far more secure in terms of lusers and Russian botnets, deep hacks like this are probably more likely.

Of course, IMO Tim Cook is a lying POS and the NSA has the keys to the kingdom, but it's much easier to debunk him technically than to prove he's talking out his ass.

* - OS X is an Open Group certified UNIX 03, therefore ultimately Thompson invented it.

[Jesus Malverde]

13. They can get apple to pull it for them with a court order...

and the NSA owns the network connections around the servers. You don't need direct access to a server to get all it's traffic.

I think tim cooks lack of outrage and reassurances are very telling.

An Apple spokesman said: "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers

Joe Sullivan, Facebook's chief security officer, said it did not provide government organisation with direct access to Facebook servers.

A Google spokesman also said it did not provide officials with access to its servers.

A Yahoo spokesman said: "Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.

Direct Access is an NSA pr word to minimize their participation in these illegal programs. Programs which open them to civil and maybe criminal liability.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/prism-tech-giants-shock-nsa-data-mining

Tim Cook thinks we're naive and lack intelligence.

[Jesus Malverde]

14. How many security updates have been released since this whole story broke...tim???