alt Hacker News> We know it is practical to have a LiDAR scanner in the same assembly as an image sensor because the rear camera bump of the iPhone Pro has a LiDAR scanner alongside the optical lenses.
The iPhone Pro starts at $1199.
Moreover, LiDAR is essentially a laser that emits at a particular wavelength and a camera that detects that wavelength, so it could be fooled by pointing it at a screen that emits at the same wavelength, which in turn could be an ordinary screen with something in front of it that converts light at a wavelength it emits to the one the LiDAR sensor is expecting.
And that's if you insist on using light. The LiDAR sensor itself is an analog piece of hardware that converts the light into an electrical signal, so if you substitute its electrical output as the input to the signing hardware then it signs whatever you want and never knows the difference.
The hardest part about this is probably creating a credible depth map of a generated 2D image, which is the part that doesn't require signatures or attestation.
> The technology need not be 100% tamper-proof to affect society: there is a huge difference in persuasiveness between the claim that anyone could have created a particular video by submitting to an AI some starting videos and images and a few prompts and the claim that anyone with years of technical training and experience could have bought 500 iPhones and used very expensive equipment to create 499 ruined iPhones and one iPhone that Apple's engineers have not detected yet that can be used to create falsely attested recordings.
Until one of the people with the capacity to do it sets up a website where anyone can submit an image and have it signed.
Moreover, isn't "most people can't do this but some people still can" actually worse? It's a system for providing undue credibility to the forgeries from the people who can do it.
Without even making most legitimate images more credible, since most phone cameras don't have fancy LiDAR hardware.
>The iPhone Pro starts at $1199
The camcorder used to record the Rodney King beating also probably cost at least $1199. LiDAR will spread to cheaper smartphones if enough consumers start to value it, and many (maybe most) consumers will do if it becomes necessary for the consumer to retain the ability to make recordings that can be used as evidence.
>it could be fooled by pointing it at a screen that emits at the same wavelength
LiDAR emits a pulse, then times how long it takes to get a pulse back, so your exploit got a lot more technically complicated since of course these pulses travel at the speed of light.
>substitute its electrical output as the input to the signing hardware
The LiDAR scanner is part of an integrated circuit (IC) that encrypt the data from the LiDAR scanner. To get at the unencrypted data, you would have to uncap the IC and use a scanning electron microscope or such.
How do I know so much about iPhone hardware? I don't, except I know that Apple is widely believed to be the world's leader in hardware security, so I strongly suspect that every single data path in a recent iPhone is encrypted before it leaves any IC.
>Until one of the people with the capacity to do it sets up a website where anyone can submit an image and have it signed.
The web server behind the site would have to be connected to a compromized iPhone Pro. As soon as Apple becomes aware of the web site, they will disable that iPhone Pro. Specifically, they will be able to determine its ID number (term?) from the attestation, and I'm pretty sure they already have the ability to disable an iPhone by ID number.
>Moreover, isn't "most people can't do this but some people still can" actually worse?
If Apple cares and is willing to expend the necessary engineering resources, then anyone (other the Apple itself) who makes any sort of notable or economically important or culturally important use of their ability to create a false attestation will retain the ability for only a brief time.
The last time a public jailbreak was released for modern iPhone hardware running the actively signed, latest iOS version was in May 2020, which is over six years ago. It is possible that someone will publish a jailbreak in the future, but the lifespan of that jailbreak will probably be only a few days. I expect Apple could exert a level of control over "camera remote attestation" similar to the level of control it has already achieved over which OSes (and which apps) can run on its iPhones. In general, these "technical regimes" are designed to make it easy for the engineering organization to recover from exploits as soon as the organization becomes aware of the exploit.
Again: do you really want photographic evidence to stop being useful in almost every situation (e.g., in court)? If not, then what is your alternative to "technical regimes" reliant on remote attestation similar to the regime I just described?