Also, don't be mislead by the headline. To quote a comment on the article:
"Imagine the Secure Enclave as a vault. Apple hung a big, dark curtain over it to prevent anyone from even seeing the vault. Now, that curtain has been opened and people can see the vault. The vault, however, is still locked as securely as ever."
For more on that, as mentioned in the linked page, there’s the “Demystifying the Secure Enclave Processor” talk from Blackhat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNeUT_sRos
Or here’s the PDF:
https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Mandt-De...
So basically it’s only misleading to 99.9999% of people?
From the [ios security guide]:
> The Secure Enclave provides all cryptographic operations for Data Protection key management and maintains the integrity of Data Protection even if the kernel has been compromised.
e.g. you can encrypt and decrypt, referencing a key by id, but without having the private key ever leave the enclave, even if the app or iOS kernel gets compromised.
[ios security guide] https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
The Secure Enclave section is pretty short and the entire document is very approachable.
Several months ago I saw a project making wallet software that used the enclave. I forget who they were but I think they'll have a hard sell; everyone just reflexively assumed it was insecure because it was on a phone.
Nope. Apple published a whitepaper that details how the SEP works.[1] Decrypting the firmware does help researchers look for vulnerabilities in the implementation, but it's not like Apple is relying on it being a black box.
[1] https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
Ultimately there will be some exposure from this, and they'll address each exploit as it comes just like the rest of the system.
