After the government’s PRISM program was revealed, this only increased the paranoia in some people and raised many concerns for others who were worried that the government could be reading their emails and their messages. Apple has since released a statement claiming that iMessage and FaceTime users were safe, and that even Apple themselves weren’t able to access or decrypt iMessage or FaceTime conversations. However during a recent Hack the Box conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a group of researchers called Apple out on that statement and believed that Apple could access the encrypted iMessages if they wanted.
As it stands, iMessage uses public key cryptography which relies on both a private and public key. The kicker is that Apple manages the public keys themselves and does not divulge them to the user, so there is no way of knowing if your messages are going to your intended recipient, or if Apple has substituted the key without the user’s knowledge. However the researchers note that while this is a possibility, at the moment there is no evidence to suggest that Apple or the government is reading iMessages for now. For some this is pretty disturbing news but we suppose if you’re not sending incriminating messages, you shouldn’t really have to worry, right?
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