{"id":6576,"date":"2017-02-09T18:30:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T02:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/09\/news-400\/"},"modified":"2017-02-09T18:30:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T02:30:32","slug":"news-400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/09\/news-400\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple&#039;s iCloud saved deleted browser records"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zapt4.staticworld.net\/images\/article\/2017\/02\/icloud-100708260-large.3x2.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Michael Kan | Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:30:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Apple\u2019s iCloud appears to have been holding on to users\u2019 deleted internet browsing histories, including records over a year old.<\/p>\n<p>Moscow-based forensics firm Elcomsoft noticed it was able to pull supposedly deleted Safari browser histories from iCloud accounts, such as the date and time the site was visited and when the record was deleted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, we were able to access records dated more than one year back,\u201d\u00a0wrote Elcomsoft\u2019s CEO Vladimir Katalov in a Thursday <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.elcomsoft.com\/2017\/02\/elcomsoft-extracts-deleted-safari-browsing-history-from-icloud\/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Users can set iCloud to store their browsing history so that it&#8217;s available from all connected devices. The researchers found that when a user deletes that history, iCloud doesn&#8217;t actually erase it but keeps it\u00a0in a format invisible to the user.<\/p>\n<p>The company discovered the issue with its Phone Breaker product, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2860932\/forensic-software-gets-around-icloud-security-features.html\" target=\"_blank\">forensic tool<\/a> designed to streamline the extracting files from an iCloud account.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Keeping a copy of a user\u2019s browser history can certainly be \u201cinvaluable for surveillance and investigations,\u201d Katalov said. But it\u2019s unclear if Apple knew that its iCloud service was storing the deleted records.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Apple didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment but\u00a0since Elcomsoft\u2019s blog post went live, Apple appears to be \u201cpurging\u201d older browser history records from iCloud, the forensics firm said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor what we know, they could be just moving them to other servers, making deleted records inaccessible from the outside,\u201d the blog post said. But now only deleted records as old as only two weeks can be extracted, the company said.<\/p>\n<p>Elcomsoft has previously found that Apple was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/3142400\/data-center-cloud\/apple-saves-iphone-call-history-to-icloud-but-barely-mentions-it.html\" target=\"_blank\">saving<\/a> users\u2019 call history to iCloud, but offering no explicit way to turn the synching on or off. At the time, Apple responded that its call synching function was designed for convenience, allowing customers to return phone calls from any device.<\/p>\n<p>For users concerned about their privacy, Elcomsoft said that they can opt-out of syncing their Safari browsing history from iCloud.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/article\/3168584\/security\/apples-icloud-saved-deleted-browser-records.html#tk.rss_security\" target=\"bwo\" >http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zapt4.staticworld.net\/images\/article\/2017\/02\/icloud-100708260-large.3x2.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<article>\n<section class=\"page\">\n<p>Apple\u2019s iCloud appears to have been holding on to users\u2019 deleted internet browsing histories, including records over a year old.<\/p>\n<p>Moscow-based forensics firm Elcomsoft noticed it was able to pull supposedly deleted Safari browser histories from iCloud accounts, such as the date and time the site was visited and when the record was deleted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, we were able to access records dated more than one year back,\u201d\u00a0wrote Elcomsoft\u2019s CEO Vladimir Katalov in a Thursday <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.elcomsoft.com\/2017\/02\/elcomsoft-extracts-deleted-safari-browsing-history-from-icloud\/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Users can set iCloud to store their browsing history so that it&#8217;s available from all connected devices. The researchers found that when a user deletes that history, iCloud doesn&#8217;t actually erase it but keeps it\u00a0in a format invisible to the user.<\/p>\n<p class=\"jumpTag\"><a href=\"\/article\/3168584\/security\/apples-icloud-saved-deleted-browser-records.html#jump\">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[11063,714],"class_list":["post-6576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-data-privacy","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}