Private Cloud Compute is a cloud intelligence system that Apple designed for private artificial intelligence processing, and it's what Apple is using to keep Apple Intelligence requests secure when they need to be processed in the cloud.
Apple promised to allow security and privacy researchers to verify the end-to-end security and privacy promises that Apple made with Private Cloud Compute, and today, Apple made its Private Cloud Compute Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and other materials publicly available to all security researchers.
Apple has a Private Cloud Compute (PCC) Security Guide that details all of the components of PCC and how they work to provide privacy for cloud-based AI processing. Apple released the source code for select components of PCC that help implement its security and privacy requirements, which allows for a deeper dive into PCC.
The Virtual Research Environment is a set of tools that lets researchers perform their own security analysis on PCC using a Mac. The VRE can be used for inspecting PCC software releases, verifying the consistency of the transparency log, booting a release in a virtualized environment, and modifying and debugging PCC software for deeper investigation. The VRE can be accessed in the macOS 18.1 Developer Preview and can be used with a Mac that has an Apple silicon chip and 16GB+ unified memory.
Along with these tools, Apple is expanding its Apple Security Bounty to include rewards for vulnerabilities that demonstrate a compromise of the fundamental privacy and security guarantees of Private Cloud Compute. Security researchers who locate a vulnerability can earn up to $1 million.
Tuesday November 5, 2024 5:02 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple News is providing Live Activities support for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, allowing iPhone and iPad users to track electoral results in real time directly from their Lock Screen.
The feature is rolling out for U.S. users over the course of Election Day, November 5, providing continuous updates of the electoral count. So if you're interested, you don't need to repeatedly check...
Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about.
Find My
Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by Juli Clover
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan.
The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
Friday September 13, 2024 7:39 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple has started notifying users about an upcoming revision to its iCloud Terms and Conditions, which takes effect on Monday, September 16.
We compared the text of the upcoming iCloud Terms and Conditions with the current U.S. version from September 18, 2023 and identified four key changes:
"Apple ID" references have been changed to "Apple Account" throughout.
iCloud users must agree to ...
Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but you can already find great prices on numerous iPads, including the 9th generation iPad, 10th generation iPad, iPad Air, and iPad mini.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Of course, there is a chance that ...
Monday November 4, 2024 2:36 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's fall 2024 Mac announcements have included new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models, all of which debuted with variants of Apple's M4 chip. Apple intends to update the rest of its Mac lineup with M4 series processors over the next 12 months, which will make it the first time that Apple has used the same chip generation across all of its Macs.
This means we can expect new M4...
Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well.
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If you have proof that's true, let's see it. In comparison to Proton, they have had outsourced firms inspect their servers to verify they're statement of end-to-end encryption is true. Apple has done 0 outsourced audits of their servers.
Right. That's because none of this stuff is ready to go yet. Proton's products are ready to inspect. Apple's aren't. You don't check the doneness of a steak before it hits the grill do you?
You don't have to hear it from me though. You're welcome to read Apple's documentations and promises at that link I provided, but I get the feeling that you're more interested in being skeptical than in being informed.
If you have proof that's true, let's see it. In comparison to Proton, they have had outsourced firms inspect their servers to verify they're statement of end-to-end encryption is true. Apple has done 0 outsourced audits of their servers.
This is quite better, anyone can verify the claims - virtual server Mseries with 16GB is needed: MacStudio will do. Run it yourself.
This is quite a bold step, now iCloud next please.
I'm always curious how many of these bounties are actually collected? One time I sent an iPad OS Lock Screen bypass vulnerability to Apple and nobody ever responded. Feel like that should've been worth something. For how huge some of these vulnerabilities would impact their public image if they were released, you would think Apple would be interested in paying more for them.