Private Cloud Compute (PCC) fulfills computationally intensive requests for Apple Intelligence while providing groundbreaking privacy and security protections — by bringing our industry-leading device security model into the cloud. In our post introducing Private Cloud Compute , we explained that to build public trust in the system, we would take the extraordinary step of allowing security and privacy researchers to inspect and verify the end-to-end security and privacy promises of PCC. In the weeks after we announced Apple Intelligence and PCC, we provided third-party auditors and select security researchers early access to the resources we created to enable this inspection, including the PCC Virtual Research Environment (VRE).
To help you understand how we designed PCC’s architecture to accomplish each of our core requirements, we’ve published the Private Cloud Compute Security Guide . The guide includes comprehensive technical details the components of PCC and how they work together to deliver a groundbreaking level of privacy for AI processing in the cloud. The guide covers topics such as: how PCC attestations build on an immutable foundation of features implemented in hardware; how PCC requests are authenticated and routed to provide non-targetability; how we technically ensure that you can inspect the software running in Apple’s data centers; and how PCC’s privacy and security properties hold up in various attack scenarios.
For the first time ever, we’ve created a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for an Apple platform. The VRE is a set of tools that enables you to perform your own security analysis of Private Cloud Compute right from your Mac. This environment enables you to go well beyond simply understanding the security features of the platform. You can confirm that Private Cloud Compute indeed maintains user privacy in the ways we describe.
The VRE runs the PCC node software in a virtual machine with only minor modifications. Userspace software runs identically to the PCC node, with the boot process and kernel adapted for virtualization. The VRE includes a virtual Secure Enclave Processor (SEP), enabling security research in this component for the first time — and also uses the built-in macOS support for paravirtualized graphics to enable inference.
You can use the VRE tools to:
The VRE is available in the latest macOS Sequoia 15.1 Developer Preview and requires a Mac with Apple silicon and 16GB or more unified memory. Learn how to get started with the Private Cloud Compute Virtual Research Environment .
We’re also making available the source code for certain key components of PCC that help to implement its security and privacy requirements. We provide this source under a limited-use license agreement to allow you to perform deeper analysis of PCC.
The projects for which we’re releasing source code cover a range of PCC areas, including:
You can find the available PCC source code in the apple/security-pcc project on GitHub.
To further encourage your research in Private Cloud Compute, we’re expanding Apple Security Bounty to include rewards for vulnerabilities that demonstrate a compromise of the fundamental security and privacy guarantees of PCC.
Our new PCC bounty categories are aligned with the most critical threats we describe in the Security Guide:
Because PCC extends the industry-leading security and privacy of Apple devices into the cloud, the rewards we offer are comparable to those for iOS. We award maximum amounts for vulnerabilities that compromise user data and inference request data outside the PCC trust boundary.
Apple Security Bounty: Private Cloud Compute
We designed Private Cloud Compute as part of Apple Intelligence to take an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI. This includes providing verifiable transparency — a unique property that sets it apart from other server-based AI approaches. Building on our experience with the Apple Security Research Device Program , the tooling and documentation that we released today makes it easier than ever for anyone to not only study, but verify PCC’s critical security and privacy features. We hope that you’ll dive deeper into PCC’s design with our Security Guide, explore the code yourself with the Virtual Research Environment, and report any issues you find through Apple Security Bounty. We believe Private Cloud Compute is the most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale, and we look forward to working with the research community to build trust in the system and make it even more secure and private over time.
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