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Security researchers say that governments that want to monitor citizens may abuse the system.
Apple’s plan to scan images of child abuse in the US iPhone has aroused applause from child protection organizations, but it has also raised concerns among some security researchers that the system may be abused by governments that want to monitor its citizens.
Apple said its messaging app will use machine learning on the device to warn of sensitive content, without allowing the company to read private communications. The tool Apple calls “neuralMatch” will detect images of known child abuse without the need to decrypt people’s information. If a match is found, the image will be reviewed manually, and law enforcement can be notified if necessary.
But the researchers said the tool could be used for other purposes, such as government surveillance of dissidents or protesters.
Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins University is a top cryptography researcher. He fears that it may be used to frame innocent people by sending them harmless but malicious images that are intended as child abusers. Match objects, fool Apple’s algorithm and warn law enforcement-essentially frame people.
“This is something you can do,” Green said. “Researchers have been able to do this easily.”
Technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others have been sharing “hash lists” of known child abuse images for years. Apple has also been scanning user files stored in its iCloud service, which is not as secure and encrypted as its messages, to obtain such images.
The company has been under pressure from the government and law enforcement agencies to allow it to monitor encrypted data. Proposing security measures requires Apple to strike a delicate balance between its high-profile commitment to protecting user privacy while combating child exploitation.
Apple believes that it achieved this feat through a technology developed in consultation with several well-known cryptographers, including Stanford University professor Dan Bonet, who won the Turing Award for his work in this field, often referred to as the technical edition. The Nobel Prize.
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