Even at the hardware level, if it was a separate chip that the camera data passed through or something, that's not really good enough either, people have broken TPMs before. It'd have to be baked into the camera sensor. Even then, you could attack it from the next level up, with some fancy optics and a display, or something like that.
I don't think completely solving this sort of problem is even possible.
And I'm not sure it's even useful to solve. The presence/absence of a digital signature will never be the deciding factor in whether people accept/reject an image as authentic.
And in 2026, I don't think it's too big of a stretch to imagine that there are going to be people in power that can add + remove the metadata to whatever image they want, at will, to tell whatever story they want to create. Sadly.
There were similar fears about the webtrust CA system, but AFAIK there's no known incidents where a government strongarmed a CA into misissuing a MITM certificate, and then it was used in MITM attacks. The closest is some misissued certificates seemingly due to incompetence but weren't used in attacks.
I'm very surprised Google put in so much effort to implement an approach that is basically the equivalent of client-side verification of passwords. Did no one designing it mention that it could be defeated by any rooted device?
Well, all one has to do is look at the bigger picture of how rooted devices are being shuffled into 3rd rate/totally blocked experiences and the overall direction of things starts to take very clear shape.
Actually I think this approach is very forward looking! Attestation is on the cusp of becoming a very powerful technique. We just need to figure out how to build 100% bug-free and 100% secure hardware and software, and then it's gonna work great.
That might be detectable if they signed content contains focal-length metadata... but even then, some foresight and a collection of lenses would hide it.
I would be interested in a note on whether Sony / Leica / Olympus “content credentials” do any better with their hardware to ensure a signature is assigned to data straight off the sensor.
My bet is they do considerably worse. Digital cameras are not designed with security in mind. Arbitrary code execution has been achieved on many DSLRs and there's even been open-source firmware projects for some.
Unfortunately they're a little outside of my tinkering budget, but if anyone wants to send me some I'll do my best to pwn them. Can't be any harder than a Google flagship, one would imagine.
I have ordered a faulty Sony A7 IV motherboard, but due to its faulty-ness and the lack of the rest of the camera, I'm not sure how far I'll be able to get with it.
I expect the only plausible chance (and it is a stretch) will be at-the-censor marking. Quantum bla bla magic pixie dust or unicorn farts something. The chance of a trustworthy (including from nation-state tampering a la Stalin et al) means of verification of digital anything is as good as dead imho.
I have a feeling Apple is going to knock it out of the park on this when they get around to it. They have a great foundation for doing image provenance well. The device attestation workflows are already there. And the same attacks that work against Android won't be as easy or effective because of Secure Enclave. Apple could run the whole signing process inside SEP.
And, Apple could choose to integrate a LiDAR depth map into the signed photo as a mitigation against the analog attacks (eg. pictures of screens).
Apple isn’t going to touch this with a 10-foot pole.
The provenance “proof” these approaches provide is very tenuous and nowhere near the “this is a real photo of a real world event taken by a real camera and not an AI image” proof that marketing types like to push.
Apple doesn’t want a PR disaster where some crazy image is totally fake but becomes world news because it is “cryptographically signed as being from a real iPhone so it must be real!”
I don't think completely solving this sort of problem is even possible.
The analog hole is alive and well:)
At over a decade old, still prescient as ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
I have ordered a faulty Sony A7 IV motherboard, but due to its faulty-ness and the lack of the rest of the camera, I'm not sure how far I'll be able to get with it.
And, Apple could choose to integrate a LiDAR depth map into the signed photo as a mitigation against the analog attacks (eg. pictures of screens).
The provenance “proof” these approaches provide is very tenuous and nowhere near the “this is a real photo of a real world event taken by a real camera and not an AI image” proof that marketing types like to push.
Apple doesn’t want a PR disaster where some crazy image is totally fake but becomes world news because it is “cryptographically signed as being from a real iPhone so it must be real!”