2023-11-20 13:27:40
To French capital Paris is a city with a long history of working in security technology — and the Apple not only knows this, but also has ventures in this aspect there.
According to a new report from The Independent, Apple engineers are working in a laboratory in the region to try to hack their own devices using a wide range of technology, including lasers and sensors. With this, they seek to find security gaps (both software and hardware) and remedy them as soon as possible, an important effort given the current scenario, as assessed by Apple’s head of security engineering and architecture, Ivan Krstić.
I think what’s happening is that there are more and more avenues of attack. And this is in part a function of the increasingly widespread deployment of technology. More and more technology is being used in more scenarios. This is creating more opportunities for attackers to develop some knowledge to choose a niche they want to spend their time attacking.
Unlike the operating system, where even significant security flaws can be fixed relatively simply with an update, the hardware is no longer under Apple’s power when it is sold — this means the device must be tested for years. in advance, with all possible weaknesses investigated and corrected before it is even produced.
In the case of the tests carried out by Apple, lasers are precisely fired at chips, which are also heated and cooled. The engineers who do this work are perhaps the hackers of the most capable and feature-rich Apple products in the world — and when they find something, that information will be passed along to other engineers, who will work to fix the problem.
Apple says the work is being successful and believes it is years ahead of crackers and is proud of the fact that it prevented attacks without compromising the privacy or resources of its devices, according to Krstić.
I think when you look at what’s driving this […] and what the response has been to the defenses we have built and how we have been able to protect some of our users, we feel strongly that we are doing the right thing.
Sideloading
The article briefly addressed the issue of sideloading and the impacts of Digital Markets Law (Digital Markets Actor DMA), in the European Union, on application stores. While the aim of the legislation is to make competition fair and give users more options, Krstić strongly disagrees.
According to the executive, the idea that users will have an extra choice — including the choice to join the App Store and maintain its protections — is false:
This is a huge misunderstanding and one we have tried to explain over and over once more. The reality that alternative distribution requirements enable is that the software that users in Europe need — sometimes business, other times personal and social — can only be available outside the store, distributed alternatively.
In this case, these users do not have the option of obtaining the software from a distribution mechanism they trust. And so, in fact, it’s simply not the case that users will retain the option they have today of getting all their software from the App Store.
The executive said, however, that Apple “does not see itself once morest governments”, but that the company considers it has “a duty to defend users once morest threats”, regardless of their nature.
via 9to5Mac
1700487208
#Apple #executive #reveals #hacker #lab #comments #sideloading
