A Seven Year Apple Odyssey That Ended At The Enclave
With the September 10th, 2013 announcement [1] of the iPhone 5s and the Touch ID fingerprint technology, Apple has moved the world quite a leap forward with security and a magical way to gain instant access to our iPhones. This was a rather long journey for Apple that I know will bear fruit for the next 10 years.
I have been tracking the notion that Apple would deploy fingerprint scanners since 2008 [2] and was rather certain that I would one day see Apple release what is now known as Touch ID. Over the years many very educated and perhaps well known people in the tech world would discount the entire range of logical premises Apple would base this product on. Some of that view changed after the summer of 2012 when Apple acquired AuthenTec. At that point some of the payment startups I was advising began to finally take note. Some however hoped if they ignore me and perhaps Apple, this would all just go away (this was actually said out loud by a founder no less).
Back in 2008 when I first saw the Apple patent that literally sent me back into my chair and yelled out [2] as I saw the future in one image in that patent application. However I began to wonder how would Apple secure such an important piece of biometric data. Working in the payment card business for over 30 years and in particular with the encryption requirements for PIN numbers, I knew that there could be no software only solution for this problem. Thus I always knew that there would be a need for a segregated area to encase this data in hardware. Did not guess it would be poetically called an Enclave.
The World Of The Secure Enclave
In the torrent of the billions of words already written about Touch ID very, very few people have really understood just how revolutionary this really is. Apple not only has developed one of the most accurate mass produced biometric security devices, they have also solved critical problems with how the data from this device will be encrypted, stored and secured. Apple Calls this the Secure Enclave and it is a relatively new concept.
Illustration of the iPhone Secure Enclave.
iPhone Gets Help From Extra ARMs
The iPhone 5s uses the ARMv8 based processor (known as A7 by Apple) designed by ARM Limited[3] and Apple. The A7 uses a 64-bit processor architecture as opposed to the 32-bit processor architecture of the older iPhones. This is a rather large gain in raw processor horsepower but it will not be fully useful for quite sometime as code recompiles will be needed to allow apps to uses the performance gain. We will begin to see some specialized apps that are 5s only at some future date as backward compiles may not make sense. Apple is also using the M7, a companion core to the A7 and will control accelerometer, gyroscope and compass and other not so obvious things.
With the September 10th, 2013 announcement [1] of the iPhone 5s and the Touch ID fingerprint technology, Apple has moved the world quite a leap forward with security and a magical way to gain instant access to our iPhones. This was a rather long journey for Apple that I know will bear fruit for the next 10 years.
I have been tracking the notion that Apple would deploy fingerprint scanners since 2008 [2] and was rather certain that I would one day see Apple release what is now known as Touch ID. Over the years many very educated and perhaps well known people in the tech world would discount the entire range of logical premises Apple would base this product on. Some of that view changed after the summer of 2012 when Apple acquired AuthenTec. At that point some of the payment startups I was advising began to finally take note. Some however hoped if they ignore me and perhaps Apple, this would all just go away (this was actually said out loud by a founder no less).
Back in 2008 when I first saw the Apple patent that literally sent me back into my chair and yelled out [2] as I saw the future in one image in that patent application. However I began to wonder how would Apple secure such an important piece of biometric data. Working in the payment card business for over 30 years and in particular with the encryption requirements for PIN numbers, I knew that there could be no software only solution for this problem. Thus I always knew that there would be a need for a segregated area to encase this data in hardware. Did not guess it would be poetically called an Enclave.
The World Of The Secure Enclave
In the torrent of the billions of words already written about Touch ID very, very few people have really understood just how revolutionary this really is. Apple not only has developed one of the most accurate mass produced biometric security devices, they have also solved critical problems with how the data from this device will be encrypted, stored and secured. Apple Calls this the Secure Enclave and it is a relatively new concept.
iPhone Gets Help From Extra ARMs
The iPhone 5s uses the ARMv8 based processor (known as A7 by Apple) designed by ARM Limited[3] and Apple. The A7 uses a 64-bit processor architecture as opposed to the 32-bit processor architecture of the older iPhones. This is a rather large gain in raw processor horsepower but it will not be fully useful for quite sometime as code recompiles will be needed to allow apps to uses the performance gain. We will begin to see some specialized apps that are 5s only at some future date as backward compiles may not make sense. Apple is also using the M7, a companion core to the A7 and will control accelerometer, gyroscope and compass and other not so obvious things.
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