Back Doors

• Apple appears to say that there is a back door in MacOS for automatically updating some (all?) apps.

  The specific change described in the article was not malicious—it protected users from surveillance by third parties—but that is a separate question.

• The Dropbox app for Macintosh takes control of user interface items after luring the user into entering an admin password.

• Mac OS X had an intentional local back door for 4 years, which could be exploited by attackers to gain root privileges.

• The iPhone has a back door for remote wipe. It's not always enabled, but users are led into enabling it without understanding.

• The iPhone has a back door that allows Apple to remotely delete apps which Apple considers “inappropriate”. Jobs said it's OK for Apple to have this power because of course we can trust Apple.

Censorship

Apple mainly uses iOS, which is a typical jail, to impose censorship through the Apple Store. Please refer to the Apple Jails section for more information.

DRM

Digital restrictions management, or “DRM,” refers to functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers.

• Apple's new tactic to restrict users from repairing their own device and impose DRM on people is to completely disable its Face ID functionality when you replace its screen.

• Apple is putting DRM on iPhone batteries, and the system proprietary software turns off certain features when batteries are replaced other than by Apple.

• DRM makes the iPhone 7 nearly unrepairable by anyone else but Apple.

• Apple uses DRM software to prevent people from charging an iThing with a generic USB cable.

• DRM (digital restrictions mechanisms) in MacOS. This article focuses on the fact that a new model of Macbook introduced a requirement for monitors to have malicious hardware, but DRM software in MacOS is involved in activating the hardware. The software for accessing iTunes is also responsible.

• DRM that caters to Bluray disks. (The article focused on Windows and said that MacOS would do the same thing subsequently.)

• iTunes videos have DRM, which allows Apple to dictate where its customers can watch the videos they purchased.

Incompatibility

In this section, we list characteristics of Apple programs that block or hinder users from switching to any alternative program—and, in particular, from switching to free software which can liberate the device the software runs on.

• In MacOS and iOS, the procedure for converting images from the Photos format to a free format is so tedious and time-consuming that users just give up if they have a lot of them.

• Apple devices lock users in solely to Apple services by being designed to be incompatible with all other options, ethical or unethical.

• iWork (office software that runs on MacOS, iOS and iCloud) uses secret formats and provides no means of converting them to or from Open Document Formats. iWork formats have changed several times since they were first introduced. This may have had the effect of thwarting reverse engineering efforts, thus preventing free software from fully supporting them.

  iWork formats are considered unfit for document preservation.

Insecurity

These bugs are/were not intentional, so unlike the rest of the file they do not count as malware. We mention them to refute the supposition that prestigious proprietary software doesn't have grave bugs.

• Some researchers at Google found a zero-day vulnerability on MacOS, which crackers used to target people visiting the websites of a media outlet and a pro-democracy labor and political group in Hong Kong.

  Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as “hackers”.

• The pegasus spyware used vulnerabilities on proprietary smartphone operating systems to impose surveillance on people. It can record people's calls, copy their messages, and secretly film them, using a security vulnerability. There's also a technical analysis of this spyware available in PDF format.

  A free operating system would've let people to fix the bugs for themselves but now infected people will be compelled to wait for corporations to fix the problems.

  Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as “hackers”.

• Commercial crackware can get passwords out of an iMonster, use the microphone and camera, and other things.

• Apple has implemented a malware in its computers that imposes surveillance on users and reports users' computing to Apple.

  The reports are even unencrypted and they've been leaking this data for two years already. This malware is reporting to Apple what user opens what program at what time. It also gives Apple power to sabotage users' computing.

• A series of vulnerabilities found in iOS allowed attackers to gain access to sensitive information including private messages, passwords, photos and contacts stored on the user's iMonster.

  The deep insecurity of iMonsters is even more pertinent given that Apple's proprietary software makes users totally dependent on Apple for even a modicum of security. It also means that the devices do not even try to offer security against Apple itself.

• A vulnerability in Apple's Image I/O API allowed an attacker to execute malicious code from any application which uses this API to render a certain kind of image file.

• A bug in the iThings Messages app allowed a malicious web site to extract all the user's messaging history.

• The NSA can tap data in smart phones, including iPhones, Android, and BlackBerry. While there is not much detail here, it seems that this does not operate via the universal back door that we know nearly all portable phones have. It may involve exploiting various bugs. There are lots of bugs in the phones' radio software.

Interference

Various proprietary programs often mess up the user's system. They are like sabotage, but they are not grave enough to qualify for the word “sabotage”. Nonetheless, they are nasty and wrong. This section describes examples of Apple committing interference.

• Apple is systematically undermining interoperability. At the hardware level, it does this via nonstandard plugs, buses and networks. At the software level, it does this by not letting the user have any data except within one app.

• Apple is putting DRM on iPhone batteries, and the system proprietary software turns off certain features when batteries are replaced other than by Apple.

Jails

Jails are systems that impose censorship on application programs.

• Apple has made it impossible to load Navalny's tactical voting app into an iPhone in Russia.

  It is impossible because (1) the iPhone refuses to load apps from anywhere other than Apple, and (2) Apple has obeyed a Russian censorship law. The first point is enforced by Apple's nonfree software.

• Apple plans to require that all application software for MacOS be approved by Apple first.

  Offering a checking service as an option could be useful and would not be wrong. Requiring users to get Apple's approval is tyranny. Apple says the check will only look for malware (not counting the malware that is part of the operating system), but Apple could change that policy step by step. Or perhaps Apple will define malware to include any app that China does not like.

  For free software, this means users will need to get Apple's approval after compilation. This amounts to a system of surveilling the use of free programs.

• iOS, the operating system of the Apple iThings, is the prototype of a jail. It was Apple that introduced the practice of designing general purpose computers with censorship of application programs.

  Here is an article about the code signing that the iThings use to lock up the user.

  Curiously, Apple is beginning to allow limited passage through the walls of the iThing jail: users can now install apps built from source code, provided the source code is written in Swift. Users cannot do this freely because they are required to identify themselves. Here are details. While this is a crack in the prison walls, it is not big enough to mean that the iThings are no longer jails.

Examples of censorship by Apple jails

• The Russian communications watchdog tells Google and Apple to remove Navalny's app from their stores.

  Because Apple controls what a user can install, this is absolute censorship. By contrast, because Android does not do that, users can install apps even if Google does not offer them.

• Apple is putting the squeeze on all business conducted through apps for iMonsters.

  This is a symptom of a very big injustice: that Apple has the power to decide what software can be installed on an iMonster. That it is a jail.

• Apple has banned the app that Hong Kong protesters use to communicate.

  Obeying the “local laws” about what people can do with software is no excuse for censoring what software people can use.

• Apple censors the Taiwan flag in iOS on behalf of the Chinese government. When the region is set to Hong Kong, this flag is not visible in the emoji selection widget but is still accessible. When the region is set to mainland China, all attempts to display it will result in the “empty emoji” icon as if the flag never existed.

  Thus, not only does Apple use the App Store as an instrument of censorship, it also uses the iThing operating system for that purpose.

• Users caught in the jail of an iMonster are sitting ducks for other attackers, and the app censorship prevents security companies from figuring out how those attacks work.

  Apple's censorship of apps is fundamentally unjust, and would be inexcusable even if it didn't lead to security threats as well.

• Apple is censoring apps for the US government too. Specifically, it is deleting apps developed by Iranians.

  The root of these wrongs is in Apple. If Apple had not designed the iMonsters to let Apple censor applications, Apple would not have had the power to stop users from installing whatever kind of apps.

• Apple deleted several VPNs from its app store for China, thus using its own censorship power to strengthen that of the Chinese government.

• Apple used its censorship system to enforce Russian surveillance by blocking distribution of the LinkedIn app in Russia.

  This is ironic because LinkedIn is a surveillance system itself. While subjecting its users to its own surveillance, it tries to protect its users from Russian surveillance, and is therefore subject to Russian censorship.

  However, the point here is the wrong of Apple's censorship of apps.

• Apple used its censorship system to enforce China's censorship by blocking distribution of the New York Times app.

• Apple censors games, banning some games from the cr…app store because of which political points they suggest. Some political points are apparently considered acceptable.

• Apple banned a program from the App Store because its developers committed the enormity of disassembling some iThings.

• As of 2015, Apple systematically bans apps that endorse abortion rights or would help women find abortions.

  This particular political slant affects other Apple services.

• Apple has banned iThing applications that show the confederate flag. Not only those that use it as a symbol of racism, but even strategic games that use it to represent confederate army units fighting in the Civil War.

  This ludicrous rigidity illustrates the point that Apple should not be allowed to censor apps. Even if Apple carried out this act of censorship with some care, it would still be wrong. Whether racism is bad, whether educating people about drone attacks is bad, are not the real issue. Apple should not have the power to impose its views about either of these questions, or any other.

• More examples of Apple's arbitrary and inconsistent censorship.

• Apple used this censorship power in 2014 to ban all bitcoin apps for the iThings for a time. It also banned a game about growing marijuana, while permitting games about other crimes such as killing people. Perhaps Apple considers killing more acceptable than marijuana.

• Apple rejected an app that displayed the locations of US drone assassinations, giving various excuses. Each time the developers fixed one “problem”, Apple complained about another. After the fifth rejection, Apple admitted it was censoring the app based on the subject matter.

Manipulation

• “Dark patterns” are user interfaces designed to mislead users, or make option settings hard to find.

  This allows a company such as Apple to say, “We allow users to turn this off” while ensuring that few will understand how to actually turn it off.

Pressuring

Proprietary companies can take advantage of their customers by imposing arbitrary limits to their use of the software. This section reports examples of hard sell and other unjust commercial tactics by Apple.

• Apple Siri refuses to give you information about music charts if you're not an Apple Music subscriber.

Sabotage

These are situations in which Apple employs its power over users to directly intervene in ways that harm them or block their work.

• When Apple suspects a user of fraud, it judges the case secretly and presents the verdict as a fait accompli. The punishment to a user found guilty is being cut off for life, which more-or-less cripples the user's Apple devices forever. There is no appeal.

• Apple and Samsung deliberately degrade the performance of older phones to force users to buy their newer phones.

• Apple has blocked Telegram from upgrading its app for a month.

  This evidently has to do with Russia's command to Apple to block Telegram in Russia.

  The Telegram client is free software on other platforms, but not on iThings. Since they are jails, they don't permit any app to be free software.

• MacOS High Sierra forcibly reformats SSD boot drives, and changes the file system from HFS+ to APFS, which cannot be accessed from GNU/Linux, Windows or even older versions of MacOS.

• Apple will stop fixing bugs for older model iThings.

  Meanwhile, Apple stops people from fixing problems themselves; that's the nature of proprietary software.

• The iPhone 7 contains DRM specifically designed to brick it if an “unauthorized” repair shop fixes it. “Unauthorized” essentially means anyone besides Apple.

  (The article uses the term “lock” to describe the DRM, but we prefer to use the term digital handcuffs.)

• Apple stops users from fixing the security bugs in Quicktime for Windows, while refusing to fix them itself.

• The Apple Music client program scans the user's file system for music files, copies them to an Apple server, and deletes them.

• iOS version 9 for iThings sabotages them irreparably if they were repaired by someone other than Apple. Apple eventually backed off from this policy under criticism from the users. However, it has not acknowledged that this was wrong.

• Apple forced millions of iThings to download a system upgrade without asking the users. Apple did not forcibly install the upgrade but the downloading alone caused lots of trouble.

• Apple deleted from iPods the music that users had got from internet music stores that competed with iTunes.

• An Apple firmware “upgrade” bricked iPhones that had been unlocked. The “upgrade” also deactivated applications not approved by Apple censorship. All this was apparently intentional.

Subscriptions

• Apple can remotely cut off any developer's access to the tools for developing software for iOS or MacOS.

  Epic (Apple's target in this example) makes nonfree games which have their own malicious features, but that doesn't make it acceptable for Apple to have this sort of power.

Surveillance

• Apple is moving its Chinese customers' iCloud data to a datacenter controlled by the Chinese government. Apple is already storing the encryption keys on these servers, obeying Chinese authority, making all Chinese user data available to the government.

• Apple whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec reports that Apple made a practice of surreptitiously activating the Siri software to record users' conversations when they had not activated Siri. This was not just occasional, it was systematic practice.

  His job was to listen to these recordings, in a group that made transcripts of them. He does not believes that Apple has ceased this practice.

  The only reliable way to prevent this is, for the program that controls access to the microphone to decide when the user has “activated” any service, to be free software, and the operating system under it free as well. This way, users could make sure Apple can't listen to them.

• Google, Apple, and Microsoft (and probably some other companies) are collecting people's access points and GPS coordinates (which can identify people's precise location) even if their GPS is turned off, without the person's consent, using proprietary software implemented in person's smartphone. Though merely asking for permission would not necessarily legitimize this.

• Safari occasionally sends browsing data from Apple devices in China to the Tencent Safe Browsing service, to check URLs that possibly correspond to “fraudulent” websites. Since Tencent collaborates with the Chinese government, its Safe Browsing black list most certainly contains the websites of political opponents. By linking the requests originating from single IP addresses, the government can identify dissenters in China and Hong Kong, thus endangering their lives.

• The Chinese Communist Party's “Study the Great Nation” app requires users to grant it access to the phone's microphone, photos, text messages, contacts, and internet history, and the Android version was found to contain a back-door allowing developers to run any code they wish in the users' phone, as “superusers.” Downloading and using this app is mandatory at some workplaces.

  Note: The Washington Post version of the article (partly obfuscated, but readable after copy-pasting in a text editor) includes a clarification saying that the tests were only performed on the Android version of the app, and that, according to Apple, “this kind of ‘superuser’ surveillance could not be conducted on Apple's operating system.”

• In spite of Apple's supposed commitment to privacy, iPhone apps contain trackers that are busy at night sending users' personal information to third parties.

  The article mentions specific examples: Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit's Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post, The Weather Channel (owned by IBM), the crime-alert service Citizen, Yelp and DoorDash. But it is likely that most nonfree apps contain trackers. Some of these send personally identifying data such as phone fingerprint, exact location, email address, phone number or even delivery address (in the case of DoorDash). Once this information is collected by the company, there is no telling what it will be used for.

• Adware Doctor, an ad blocker for MacOS, reports the user's browsing history.

• The DMCA and the EU Copyright Directive make it illegal to study how iOS cr…apps spy on users, because this would require circumventing the iOS DRM.

• In the latest iThings system, “turning off” WiFi and Bluetooth the obvious way doesn't really turn them off. A more advanced way really does turn them off—only until 5am. That's Apple for you—“We know you want to be spied on”.

• Apple proposes a fingerprint-scanning touch screen—which would mean no way to use it without having your fingerprints taken. Users would have no way to tell whether the phone is snooping on them.

• iPhones send lots of personal data to Apple's servers. Big Brother can get them from there.

• The iMessage app on iThings tells a server every phone number that the user types into it; the server records these numbers for at least 30 days.

• iThings automatically upload to Apple's servers all the photos and videos they make.

  iCloud Photo Library stores every photo and video you take, and keeps them up to date on all your devices. Any edits you make are automatically updated everywhere. […]

  (From Apple's iCloud information as accessed on 24 Sep 2015.) The iCloud feature is activated by the startup of iOS. The term “cloud” means “please don't ask where.”

  There is a way to deactivate iCloud, but it's active by default so it still counts as a surveillance functionality.

  Unknown people apparently took advantage of this to get nude photos of many celebrities. They needed to break Apple's security to get at them, but NSA can access any of them through PRISM.

• Apple has made various MacOS programs send files to Apple servers without asking permission. This exposes the files to Big Brother and perhaps to other snoops.

  It also demonstrates how you can't trust proprietary software, because even if today's version doesn't have a malicious functionality, tomorrow's version might add it. The developer won't remove the malfeature unless many users push back hard, and the users can't remove it themselves.

• MacOS automatically sends to Apple servers unsaved documents being edited. The things you have not decided to save are even more sensitive than the things you have stored in files.

• Apple admits the spying in a search facility, but there's a lot more snooping that Apple has not talked about.

• Various operations in the latest MacOS send reports to Apple servers.

• Apple can, and regularly does, remotely extract some data from iPhones for the state.

  This may have improved with iOS 8 security improvements; but not as much as Apple claims.

• Several “features” of iOS seem to exist for no possible purpose other than surveillance. Here is the Technical presentation.

• Spotlight search sends users' search terms to Apple.

• The iBeacon lets stores determine exactly where the iThing is, and get other info too.

• Either Apple helps the NSA snoop on all the data in an iThing, or it is totally incompetent.

• The iThing also tells Apple its geolocation by default, though that can be turned off.

• There is also a feature for web sites to track users, which is enabled by default. (That article talks about iOS 6, but it is still true in iOS 7.)

• Users cannot make an Apple ID (necessary to install even gratis apps) without giving a valid email address and receiving the verification code Apple sends to it.

Tyrants

Tyrants are systems that reject any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

• Apple arbitrarily blocks users from installing old versions of iOS.

• The Apple iThings are tyrant devices. There is a port of Android to the iThings, but installing it requires finding a bug or “exploit” to make it possible to install a different system.