There are more weasel words "we are not aware" - means they actually don't know if such attack was successful, "successful" - what is the definition of success? Maybe attackers got access, but didn't find anything interesting?

Apple is digging itself into a hole.

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scottyah 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think you are, the words make perfect sense. They know of a lot of attack attempts, and so far they have no reason to believe any were successful. Success can mean a lot of different things, why list it all out (were able to extract data, install malicious software, encrypt files with ransomware, delete any data, etc).

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quantified 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They can be perfectly aware of nation-state hacks. These are exactly the weasel qualifiers used by the NSA when they were claiming not to be watching the communications of US citizens. "No intercepts were made under program X" specifically sidesteps all the shady stuff under program Y.

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Veserv 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They have a legal department carefully directing what they say. In a court of law, their lawyers will successfully argue that they are beholden to only the precise letter of their statement. Are you arguing that their lawyers are incompetent and imprecise in their wording? If so, what evidence do you have that their lawyers are incompetent?

In light of the correct legal interpretation of their words, being only the specific letters, we can see that your interpretation is incorrect.

> They know of a lot of attack attempts

No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts.

> so far they have no reason to believe any were successful

No, their statement says nothing about their belief, only their explicit knowledge. Their statement says nothing about their investigation practices or whether they even attempted to investigate and learn about attacks. Their statement says nothing about non-mercenary attacks.

Their statement is technically correct as long as any successful attacks they know about are not explicitly known to be committed by mercenarys.

	▲	saghm an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts. That's a good point. The best way not to know about any successful attacks is not to know about any of them. I also can definitively state that I'm not aware of any successful attacks, but for obvious reasons this is a basically meaningless statement. Without more data, it's not clear how meaningful the statement they gave is, and while it probably is more meaningful than mine, it doesn't make sense to jump from what they said to "there have definitively been no successful attacks" based on it.
	▲	scottyah 36 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm just going to ignore your entire first paragraph that tries to use hostility to overcome a clear willful misunderstanding, or strong evidence of a recent stroke. > No, their statement says nothing about attack attempts. Exactly, they're keeping the statement brief and correct. They have sent multiple batches of notifications to users on previous attacks. The statement is clear, covers their primary use case for the product, and I'm sure is legally sound. You're grasping at straws trying to think up ways they can be lying to you. I would be very surprised if you ever have used their lockdown mode with any actual cause.

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sally_glance 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you know their definition isn't only "received extortion letters" and "exfiltrate data" is fine as long as it didn't lead to the former?

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NoMoreNicksLeft 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>"successful" - what is the definition of success?

At risk of stating the obvious, isn't success "hacked it and no one ever found out (at the time)"? By definition, Apple could probably only be aware of unsuccessful attacks. Though that's not guaranteed either, considering all the myriad failure modes that there must be.