The circle on the left is around an encrypted email, which Gendler’s computer is not able to read, because Gendler says he removed the private key which would typically allow him to do so. Here’s an image he shared that’s helpful to explain what’s going on: Image: Bob Gendler That isn’t too shocking in and of itself - it makes sense that Apple needs to reference and learn from some of your information to provide you better Siri suggestions.īut Gendler discovered that one of those files, snippets.db, was storing the unencrypted text of emails that were supposed to be encrypted. Gendler says that while trying to figure out how macOS and Siri suggest information to users, he found macOS database files that store information from Mail and other apps which are then used by Siri to better suggest information to users. The vulnerability was shared by Bob Gendler, an Apple-focused IT specialist, in a Medium blog published on Wednesday. But the fact that Apple is still somehow leaving parts of encrypted emails out in the open, when they’re explicitly supposed to be encrypted, obviously isn’t good.
The company also says that only portions of emails are stored.
If you were a hacker, you’d need access to those system files, too.Īpple tells The Verge it’s aware of the issue and says it will address it in a future software update. You need to be using macOS, Apple Mail, be sending encrypted emails from Apple Mail, not be using FileVault to encrypt your entire system already, and know exactly where in Apple’s system files to be looking for this information. But if you send encrypted emails from Apple Mail, there’s currently a way to read some of the text of those emails as if they were unencrypted - and allegedly, Apple’s known about this vulnerability for months without offering a fix.īefore we go any further, you should know this likely only affects a small number of people. Apple stakes a lot of its reputation on how it protects the privacy of its users, as it wants to be the only tech company you trust.
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