Apple betrays the iPhone's business hopes

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090915/tc_infoworld/91723

by trezor • 17 years ago

44 27 17 years ago

tech.yahoo.com

"But how does anyone know Snow Leopard won 't have a similar breakdown in the future, if not for encryption then for something else?"

Given that the limitation (the ability to handle on-device encryption) only affects pre-3GS phones I would guess that it's a performance thing and therefore not an issue on the desktop.

This article is very hard to follow in that the author will reverse position each paragraph, in one condemning Apple for releasing something that is not secure and in the next complaining when non-secure functionality is eliminated.

The Palm Pre is mentioned as an alternative but no evidence is given to indicate the same problem doesn't exist on that platform as well, and it would be interesting to know if other remote-exchange-access devices (webmail, blackberry, etc.) provide client or device-side encryption of local files.

pyre2• 17 years ago

> This article is very hard to follow in that the author will reverse position each paragraph, in one condemning Apple for releasing something that is not secure and in the next complaining when non-secure functionality is eliminated.

He's saying that Apple betrayed trust by implementing secure feature insecurely (while claiming that it was working correctly) and when they decided to actually do something about it, they just quietly pulled out the rug from under their users. There was no Apple announcement or apology. Just a checklist item burying deep in a list of changes in an OS update. That's why he says 'double betrayal.'

jasongullickson3• 17 years ago

Did Apple explicitly claim that they were encrypting the stored files?

numair• 17 years ago

This is actually a pretty major credibility issue within the enterprise space, and one that Apple should move to address quickly. (Not that I think they'll do that, since they are busy selling videogames...)

culturestate• 17 years ago

In all honesty, everyone in corporate IT knew damn well that iPhones did not support hardware encryption until the 3GS. Why do you think Schiller made such a big deal out of it during the keynote ("The #1 request from business users has been hardware encryption..." or something like that)?

This is yet one more in a string of under-researched, hysterical articles from InfoWorld that are making that magazine the tech equivalent of US! Weekly.

kwantam• 17 years ago

You're not disagreeing with what the article said. The article claimed (rightly or not, I cannot comment) that the iPhone software claimed to the Exchange server that it did support encryption, then just didn't encrypt anything.

I don't believe for a second that "everyone in corporate IT" knew this and yet allowed their users to connect with iPhones and endanger the security of the network.

Again, I don't know that the article's claims are accurate, but your comment clearly does not clash with the aforementioned claims.

blasdel• 17 years ago

infoworld.com is on the banned domains list for exactly this reason

pmorici4• 17 years ago

Why does Microsoft even include a client encryption check at all shouldn't it be up to the businesses buying these end user devices to check how the data is being stored?

This is like the don't "copy bit" for DRM if you don't follow it it doesn't matter. Apple never said their device supported on device encryption that I heard so why are all of these businesses suddenly surprised.?

StrawberryFrog3• 17 years ago

Apple never said their device supported on device encryption

Actually, their software made exactly that claim, and falsely, if I read the article correctly.

pmorici4• 17 years ago

Maybe it's a trickery of language. Apple said they "supported Exchange" so you could read your email. There was never any claim they supported encryption on the client. Maybe a lot of businesses assumed they did.

skwiddor• 17 years ago

    echo 'here''s your problem'' | {
        apple
        exchange
    }

hmm

mildweed• 17 years ago

Not to mention the tethering loophole is gone in 3.1 too.

eelco• 17 years ago

Still works fine here.

jsz0• 17 years ago

"How many businesses will revisit their iPhone support now that they know Apple shipped and promoted a product as fit for business only to later find that the device had a major security flaw? "

Probably not many. Many products, including ones never patched without a paid upgrade, have had known security flaws. Including products like Windows, Exchange and Office. Hasn't stopped their acceptance as industry standard tools has it? In terms of how it effects the iPhone enterprise user base we should consider a couple facts:

iPhone OS 3.0 was released at the same time as the iPhone 3GS hardware (June 19th 2009)

iPhone OS 2.x did not support Exchange.

So I think you can make a reasonable case that before June 19th 2009 very few of these encryption-required companies were buying iPhones since they simply didn't support Exchange. Post June 19th 2009 how many companies were buying non-GS models? We could further sub-divide this based on the discovery of the encryption loop hole which you would hope any of these encryption-required companies were aware of. So by my crude calculations I think there is probably a month period where companies may have been buying non-GS iPhones with an expectation of pure encryption-required support.

trezor• 17 years ago

iPhone OS 2.x did not support Exchange. So I think you can make a reasonable case that before June 19th 2009 very few of these encryption-required companies were buying iPhones since they simply didn't support Exchange.

This is factually incorrect. I've been using the Exchange integration on the iPhone since fall 2008.

Granted, as this article shows, Apple has been reporting false information to Exchange, but the Exchange support has been there.

Apple betrays the iPhone's business hopes

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