Apple operating systems automatically apply patches to devices for critical security updates so long as those patches are signed by a cryptographic private key held by Apple. That is in fact an RCE system that already exists.
There also exist humans that have access to those private keys, and those humans can be controlled by money, court orders, or violence.
In China the CCP has control over the software signing keys, so they can push any software to any apple device they like.
How long before US politicians start demanding the same?
Or maybe they just make a security mistake. Maybe a state actor performs a side channel attack on the known vulnerable Apple Silicon that powers their HSMs.
> In China the CCP has control over the software signing keys, so they can push any software to any apple device they like.
I've never heard about China having special iOS releases signed by different keys. Fairly sure all devices across the world get the same exact OS builds, but would be curious to read more about this if you have any sources?
My core area of research is supply chain attacks, and I run a company where we regularly train high risk organizations how to remove trust from any single human or system in critical areas of their stack like key management, CI/CD, etc. Many of our clients are fintech companies where trusting a single person, even a system administrator, would seriously endanger them.
Meanwhile Apple sysadmins still manage most of their infra with centrally controlled Puppet nodes last I heard.
Speaking of Linux distros, I created a 100% reproducible and full-source-bootstrapped Linux distro where every package is signed and reproduced by multiple people to avoid having to trust any single human, including me.
There also exist humans that have access to those private keys, and those humans can be controlled by money, court orders, or violence.
In China the CCP has control over the software signing keys, so they can push any software to any apple device they like.
How long before US politicians start demanding the same?
Or maybe they just make a security mistake. Maybe a state actor performs a side channel attack on the known vulnerable Apple Silicon that powers their HSMs.
SPOFs always tend to fail.