There has long been one flaw that makes iCloud maybe just slightly less attractive than other services: email is only encrypted when sent between iCloud email addresses, and not when that email is coming or going from another email service such as Gmail or Yahoo.
This news comes following an NPR article that detailed the security of a variety of email services, which led to Apple reaching out to clarify a few things. As you can see in the quote, the change is expected “soon,” but no specific timeline was provided.Apple encrypts e-mail from its customers to iCloud. However, Apple is one of the few global email providers based in the U.S. that is not encrypting any of its customers’ email in transit between providers. After we published, the company told us this would soon change. This affects users of me.com and mac.com email addresses.
As noted by Mark Gurman, Google’s data protection website is clear proof of the problem here. As you can see, inbound emails are the only ones being encrpyted, while outbound are not — labeled in red with a “0%” below. Apple is going to need to coordinate with other providers, including many beyond Gmail, to make this end-to-end encryption work.
Apple has published its fair share of transparency reports when it comes to security, but NPR says that Apple still has a way to go in making sure that other iCloud services are secure:
We found that many app installations and iOS updates are sent unencrypted to iPhones. The configuration files that let your telecom company control aspects of how your iPhone works is also unencrypted. Apple says these updates are authenticated and can’t be changed. All pre-login browsing/shopping traffic from the Apple Store is unencrypted, including all HTML content, images, etc. So if you are a huge Abba fan the NSA could find out.But Apple does intend on releasing both Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 later this year, both of which touting improved security features. While we don’t yet know exactly when or how Apple intends to improve its end-to-end iCloud encryption, it definitely appears that that is its first priority.
[via 9to5Mac]
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