Apple would abandon its iCloud encryption project because of the FBI

This would be a major turnaround in the situation falling within the framework of thewar between the FBI and the Californian firm. The latter,according to information from the Reuters newspaper, would have in fact decided todo not persist with your iCloud encryption project, under the duress of the FBI precisely.

In fact, Apple has been working for 2 years now on a new technology for encrypting iCloud users' information, with end-to-end encryption. Such a level of security would ensure that it is impossible for a hacker penetrating the iCloud servers to have access to the data found, without a key allowing them to decrypt them.

Because currently, iCloud is not protected in this way. And all it takes is a request from law enforcement for a suspected user's iCloud data to be recovered.

This would obviously not be possible with end-to-end encryption, which would guarantee that only the user is able to decrypt their data, as specified above. The police, for example, would not be able to access end-to-end encrypted data on iCloud.

And this obviously would not please the FBI, whichfight against Apple in the context of the Pensacola massacre, but who has also already been to court for the previous San Bernardino killings.

Because in both cases, Apple resisted to requests from the federal office for additional investigations into the killers' iOS devices. However, you should know that Tim Cook's company has already provided assistance in the most recent case which has been making a lot of noise for several weeks. Gigabytes of information from the shooter's iCloud account were allegedly provided to the FBI. With end-to-end encryption, again, this would not have been possible.

But in the end, according to Reuters, it seems that the FBI has won a notable victory, by preventing Apple from implementing such security for its cloud. Let us note, however, that for the moment this is only arumor, nothing official has been announced yet about Apple abandoning end-to-end encryption for iCloud.

Note that end-to-end encryption for the Californian company's services remains limited for the moment to health data, passwords, HomeKit data and iMessage. Which is not without lacking logic in certain cases. Indeed, the user can use iMessage while being assured that the exchanges are end-to-end encrypted. But by activating iCloud backup for iMessages, they then lose this security.

Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.