To give it to you straight: it would take roughly 1.2 unvigintillion years (that’s a 1 followed by 51 zeros) for the fastest supercomputer on Earth to brute-force AES-256 encryption. In other words, AES-256 is practically unbreakable by modern computing standards. Even if you hijacked every computer on the planet, the sun would literally burn out and the entire universe would experience heat death long before you even made a dent. The above commenter apparently has "foundational level knowledge" of computer systems, yet thinks they can put backdoors into their own products.

Just to give you an idea of how this actually functions in their products; Apple comprehensively bakes encryption into both the hardware and software levels of iPhones and iPads by default, making it one of the most secure consumer operating systems available. Every modern Apple device features a dedicated coprocessor called the Secure Enclave which leverages a Built-in Crypto Engine, to ensure that that all data stored on the device's flash storage is encrypted at the hardware level using an AES-256. On top of that, they utilise UIDs (Unique Device Keys) which are physically fused into the device's silicon, during manufacturing. Neither Apple nor the iOS software itself can read this key directly. These are basically just base keys that encrypt the entire file system (including the OS itself). Because the encryption is tied to the specific hardware, they are not even capable of engineering their own backdoors into their systems, without completely breaking the entire underlying security architecture, which underpins all their devices.

It's not about me trusting these proprietary systems, it's about me trusting mathematics, and basing my decisions off historical facts. Apple can't just "magic" backdoors into their devices, and since a significant part of their business model has been in pioneering widespread commercial data privacy, it would literally go against their entire business interests. OS backdoors do compromise devices, which is why Apple pays > $1M for bug bounty hunters who find them first.

The problem with you, is that you have no foundational knowledge of how digital devices work, and that's understandable given how widespread these technologies have become. But trust me when I say, cybersecurity isn't a multi-billion dollar industry for no reason, individuals and large corporations pay a shit ton of money to guarantee they aren't shooting in the dark with their systems security & privacy. If you wanna learn more about this stuff, I highly recommend watching Edward Snowden's video interviews where he talks extensively about what he found in the leaks he made about the NSA, because he's able to detail a lot about what intelligence agencies can and can't do when it comes to this stuff.

Keep in mind though, that encryption has been a fundamental game changer which makes it impossible for the CIA even to create a giant search engine that indexes everyone's data, that was only possible back then because everything was sent in plain text with practically zero wifi security. Now wifi security has become a cybersecurity speciality in and of itself.

Dread?? How old do you think I am 😂 Tbf I did give the impression I'm old, but I didn't realise I came off as being ancient lmao.