Asahi Linux progress: Apple Silicon OS works – though it's 'rough around the edges' and has no GUI acceleration Developer Hector Martin has reported on progress with Asahi Linux, a port for Apple Silicon Macs, and said that the OS now works but with some limitations, notably a lack of accelerated graphics. In his August progress report, Martin talks further about the challenges of porting Linux to a platform that was created by Apple …
The Intel or other companies didn't publicly express intent for warrantless data sweeps. Intel and AMD cpus may be capable of such performing such tasks, however those companies don't have a control on the entire ecosystem, whereas Apple controls hardware and software, so they can do that easily.
The content format detection is not a rocket science and the streams can certainly be probed for keywords and things like accessed image data can be extracted from data streams. Take into account that M1 has direct access to the large amount of memory, so once a certain header is identified, it can then be buffered, queued and processed through nnhash without the main operating system knowledge.
It's possible but impractical. These external devices likely process already encrypted data and do not have enough metadata nor processing power to conduct such surveillance.
Embedding this in M1 processor is a perfect opportunity for that, because you cannot replace the CPU nor memory nor the drive and it will have all metadata to be able to select what needs to be inspected, stored and then processed. M1 has all what's needed for such processing.
For example if you wanted to create such system on a memory module, you would essentially have to add a computer on already cramped board and you wouldn't have the same access to I/O as the CPU etc. plus if you seen a memory module, something like this would immediately look dodgy and you could just replace the module.
The most basic version could work like this on a CPU level:
The supervisor program could run off a non maskable interrupt:
- Am I running macOS? If not, continue
- Setup a non maskable periodical memory scanning interrupt
Mind you that the entire hardware stack is controlled by Apple, so they can embed the ML model on the integrated SSD and the running operating system wouldn't be able to modify it without special privileges.
- Scanning interrupt triggers
- Is there any idle core available? If yes, continue
- Scan the memory, en-queue pointers to any detected JPEG signature or copy it to a location
- Load the ML model from a known location if it is not already loaded
- Use integrated Neural Engine to perform neural hash analysis.
- If any hash match found, store it in a buffer
- Is there any hash in a buffer? If not, return
- Is there enough hashes to meet the threshold? If yes, continue
Here given that again Apple has control over entire hardware stack, they can easily initiate a network connection and send the hashes for review. This will only be few bytes or kB.
The entire process can run separately from the running operating system and be extremely difficult to detect and AI is hardware accelerated so user wouldn't notice any slow down.
There are reports that this NeuralHash Apple has already hidden in iOS 14.
Yeah, you've just discovered what a rootkit is. Apple could write a rootkit. So could anyone else. There could be one on your computer right now. The manufacturer could have hidden it on a firmware chip or the processor manufacturer could have it in microcode. Better smash it up to be on the safe side.
And why are you gaslighting? Did Qualcomm or Samsung declare that they will be treating their customers as potential suspects and start scanning their personal data and reporting them to authorities?
Apple have been upfront about the way they scan user's phone content, and that's not a backdoored CPU.
If you disbelieve Apple's description, then if anyone is going to find unexplained mailboxes to secret off-board processors or to find missing CPU cycles, then it's this very project.
Documentation of CPU functions doesn't help solve your concern -- Apple can simply not document the CPU functions which concern you. What you want is forward- and reverse-traceability from requirement to implementation. So you can prove that there's not a single gate in the CPU silicon which can't be traced back to a requirement. This is expensive and isn't offered outside of cryptographic processors.
The difficulty in providing a design is trustworthy is so hard that it's unlikely that any commodity CPU would meet this level of trust. It's just too easy for chip fabrication tooling to add covert CPU gates or chip initialisation code to your design. Similarly in verifying that the semiconductor fabrication mask doesn't have covertly-added etching. Bunny Huang goes through this in some detail in his effort to build a trustworthy laptop.
Apple have been upfront about the way they scan user's phone content, and that's not a backdoored CPU.
Except they have not been upfront. Today it emerged they have already shipped the neuralhash code in the iOS 14.3.
Your other points are valid, however, Apple is acting dishonestly and expressed an intent and they have serious capability to make it happen. All these factors give grounds to be concerned and treat the platform as no longer secure.
"Yeah, if all those rational rebuttals like "did you knock your head?" and "Smash up your computer" don't work then just take the piss some more, eh?"
You're not a regular visitor to these parts are you? If you were you'd know taking the piss is why TheRegister exists and that includes the forums too.
One suspects ARM cores for compute (non-Apple) may become rather more common than just in Phones and Tablets in coming years.
X86 is reaching the limits of it's architecture, just like PPC did in the mid 2000's and 68K in the mid 90's. Sure, you can try and crank clock speed to extract extra power but the diminishing returns, appalling energy efficiency and short part lifetime are not conducive to results. Going "more parallel" is also reaching practical limits for desktop applications. Bulk number crunchy processes like video encoding or machine learning being the exception of course - the latter GPU's often better suited anyway.
So, if you want more speed for less power over the coming years, ARM happens to be the way to go right now.
Linux on M1 isn't just Linux on M1, it's also the foundation of linux on M1X and future Apple hardware too.
If they can get it running well I'm sure there will be some people who buy M1 Macs to run Linux on. They're very fast and very quiet, and would make good Linux machines so long as you are willing to accept the negatives (relatively expensive, current models not expandable)
It sounds like very hard work. I wonder if it’s all done in ‘free time’ and then I think; ‘how does some one get THAT good unless it’s their job, and then presumably they’d be doing something that their paymasters wanted, rather than this which seems to be a passion project’. But then I think; ‘who’s paying for that dev effort?’ Makes no sense to me - but I’m all for it!! Maybe El Reg could interview these folk and find out what makes them tick?
Not sure what you mean by "good linux machine", shouldn't a good one have an open architecture to go with the open software it runs? How good can linux be on a proprietary multi chip system like this?
Surely it's better to work on hardware that has open specifications?
I don't think you have to have open everything for something to be good, although the definition of "good" will vary from person and use case to person and use case.
Over in the corner I have what I consider to be a "good" Linux machine. It's basically a modest i7-based tower that used to run Windows, got a bit wobbly and found itself being rebuilt with Ubuntu. It's plenty capable of running productivity applications, email/web stuff and playing media into my TV. As a capable home PC, it is perfectly "good". I don't think my experience would be improved if hardware was replaced by something with open specifications.
I wouldn't make any plans which depend on running Linux on an M1 Mac as Apple can just push an update which makes life more difficult than it is now or even impossible. If they wanted you to run Linux then things would be easier than they are now. Why not just support an ARM computer manufacturer who wants you as a customer?
This post has been deleted by its author
"unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs."
Maybe. But I bet somewhere on Tim Cook's desk is a Big Red Button that can change than in an instant. ( probably right beside the button that emails El Reg, and equally dusty and unused.) This is Apple - it's not that they won't, it's just that they haven't (yet).
"unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs."
They already did, the bootloader will only boot partitions which look like MacOS installations.
In order for an OS to be bootable on Apple Silicon machines, it has to “look” like a real macOS installation. This means it has to be an APFS container with multiple volumes within it, containing specific directory structures and files. Until now, the simplest way of doing this was to actually install macOS a second time in a separate partition, and then replace its kernel with m1n1. This is, needless to say, a major pain in the ass, as the installation process is fairly slow. It also wastes around 70GB of disk space, which is how much you need for an upgradable macOS install. It also makes it difficult to install a specific macOS version, which is going to become a problem once we start requiring the usage of specific firmware bundles. This clearly won’t cut it for anything beyond early development.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
