If the happy path disappears, the not-so-happy path will be taken to allow for booting custom kernels, one that will likely rely on turning the some or a lot of the RE energy towards breaking the Secure Enclave, the bootloader, and so on. Apple practically laid the red carpet out to avoid people trying to crack the parts of the hardware/software chain-of-trust they would really rather not have cracked. A similar strategy helped keep the Xbox One un-pwned for over a decade (running homebrew was allowed in a specific mode). It is doubtful Apple's legal department isn't aware of the value of the current software strategy.
No, if their lawyers want it gone, Apple will just update the bootloader to reject local signing keys.
The actual problem was that Apple has an undocumented APFS key for if a volume is bootable, which Asahi wasn't setting and Apple wasn't checking, but now they do, so they do.
If the happy path disappears, the not-so-happy path will be taken to allow for booting custom kernels, one that will likely rely on turning the some or a lot of the RE energy towards breaking the Secure Enclave, the bootloader, and so on. Apple practically laid the red carpet out to avoid people trying to crack the parts of the hardware/software chain-of-trust they would really rather not have cracked. A similar strategy helped keep the Xbox One un-pwned for over a decade (running homebrew was allowed in a specific mode). It is doubtful Apple's legal department isn't aware of the value of the current software strategy.
So isn't that just purely security by obscurity then? Would they not rather have someone publicly break it instead of selling a zero day?
No, if their lawyers want it gone, Apple will just update the bootloader to reject local signing keys.
The actual problem was that Apple has an undocumented APFS key for if a volume is bootable, which Asahi wasn't setting and Apple wasn't checking, but now they do, so they do.