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Illicit iPhone App Store Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight
- cheez 8y agoThey call this illicit but actually, this to me seems to be a valid use of the technology. The only reason Apple has to prevent this is to maintain the walled garden.
- benologist 8y agoThe only reason it is even 'illicit' is Apple arbitrarily determines what may or may run on iOS. It's not illicit when PC software does something Microsoft doesn't like. The Amazon App Store isn't an illicit app store and apps downloaded from there aren't illicit compared to Google's app store. It's all just arbitrary, including their rules for what is allowed: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ This historical version is my favorite in which Apple try to suppress negative press by threatening developers who fall victim to arbitrary rejections - "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps." https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://developer...
- gpmcadam 8y agoSeriously, the "only reason"?
- zeveb 8y agoOnce someone has bought an iPhone from Apple, it's no longer Apple's phone. Apple no longer owns it. If the owner of the phone (who is, again, not Apple) wishes to trust only Apple-approved software, that is 100% his choice. But if he wishes to install software that Apple doesn't approve of, that's also a 100% legitimate choice. Sorry for all the emphasis, but this stuff is important. Once a manufacturer has sold a product, it no longer has any claim to it — none. It belongs to the purchaser, who is the sole owner.
- mschuster91 8y agoMost expensive phones, however, are not purchased by the consumer but rather financed via contract, which means the phone technically belongs to the phone company - and they usually disallow jailbreaking or any other thing that would void the manufacturer warranty.
- nathankunicki 8y agoThat's irrelevant. If the phone carrier wants to lock those phones down, fine, though Apple has typically fought against carrier mods. However the same App Store policies apply to all iPhone owners, regardless of how it was purchased.
- gpmcadam 8y agoOK but what does this have to do with the original point? There are plenty of reasons why Apple might want to prevent pirated app stores from being used on their devices: legal, ethical and sure, financial. But "keeping people in their walled garden" isn't the _only_ reason, is it?
- osmarks 8y agoCan you think of another one?
- joemi 8y ago> There are plenty of reasons why Apple might want to prevent pirated app stores from being used on their devices: legal, ethical and sure, financial. The comment you were replying to mentioned two others, right there...
- zeveb 8y ago> OK but what does this have to do with the original point? There are plenty of reasons why Apple might want to prevent pirated app stores from being used on their devices: legal, ethical and sure, financial. That was my whole point: once sold, those phones are no longer Apple's devices. Apple has absolutely no legitimate say in what the new owners choose to do with those phones. Nor does Apple have any legal or ethical exposure to what the new owners do with their phones: that is the owners' liability. Now, the owners may wish to enter an arrangement with Apple, and Apple may only choose to enter into that arrangement if the owners do certain things or refrain from doing certain things. That's completely fair. What's not fair is 'selling' someone a device, but retaining ownership of it. That's not a sale; it's a lease.
- jon-wood 8y ago“It’s not clear what permissions you’re granting”. If they’re installing enterprise certs then you’re granting all the permissions, plus I’m sure a few no app in the store is going to be granted by Apple.
- saagarjha 8y agoEnterprise certificates still need to ask for permission to access the camera, microphone, etc. But you're right: they can use entitlements that Apple will not grant normal App Store apps.
- anyfoo 8y agoWhat? Enterprise profiles are only allowed the set of entitlements that they are granted, similar to the App Store.
- dkonofalski 8y agoYes and most people who stumble upon this to get "free apps" are just going to allow all entitlements without really knowing what that means.
- anyfoo 8y agoNo, the entitlements are granted by Apple, not the user. It's not the same thing as the prompts you get for e.g. the Camera.
- dkonofalski 8y agoRight... but that's the case here. People are installing certs that grant all entitlements, a completely valid situation for someone using the certs as intended but not for someone unknowingly doing so. Apple is removing the certs whenever they can but that can't possibly cover every situation.
- deleted 8y ago
- kalleboo 8y agoAs an iOS developer, we get crash reports from the buggy ad libraries injected by these app stores all the time. Googling the injected library names actually come up with surprisingly few results (mostly from the pirate community itself like /r/sideloaded) so I don't know how many developers are aware of this
- magnetic 8y agoAre you building an app X that crashes because of a library installed by app Y? I imagine that installing via Enterprise Certs doesn't remove the sandboxing around Y... Can you please elaborate on what's actually happening?
- saagarjha 8y agoA lot of sideloaded apps are normal app store apps with "tweaks" applied to them: think Snapchat that lets you keep images, or YouTube with no ads. Sometimes, these resigned apps have malware or ad libraries built into them.
- magnetic 8y agoThat was my understanding, hence my question. I don't understand how such app can affect another app (which is what the parent was complaining about I think). Also I'm confused as to why my question was downvoted... I'm a dev too who's released a few sandboxed apps (on iOS and macOS) and would like to understand if there is a vulnerability in the sandbox somewhere. Seems like this would be useful to understand for many devs.
- saagarjha 8y agoNo, there's no vulnerability in the sandbox. What is happening is that people are grabbing copies of an app, adding code to it (usually, by adding a new dynamic library and forcing the main binary to load it), and then distributing the modified app outside of the App Store. Any crashes in the modified app will still be reported to the original app developer, since aside from the small (or maybe not so small?) tweaks that were made the app functions like it normally would.
- pochamago 8y agoTerrifying that you could download apps that aren't in the official store. Why, it's almost like having an Android
- osmarks 8y agoIt's not great that you have to ruin security and install an enterprise cert to do this, but that's just the inevitable result of excessively locked down systems.
- dkonofalski 8y agoThis is a little worrisome and I think it's a bit irresponsible of The Verge to be publishing something like this without being clearer about what potential issues and vulnerabilities something like this could expose. They're making it sound like such a great thing without even attempting to talk through what possible attack vectors this exposes and what this could do to someone's device. "so long as you’re willing to hand the keys to your security and privacy to an unknown, likely China-based entity" doesn't cover it well enough, in my opinion. They need to give examples. This only highlights the disconnect in technology of people who know "how to use devices" but not how those devices work.
- nathankunicki 8y agoI disagree, and almost take exactly the opposite stance. I think it is a great thing, there are many apps on these app stores which are useful that apple would never allow. It is good to have alternative options. I look at the wording of the title of this Verge article (and a few others that come out lately) and see it as another example of media spreading fear through unnecessarily alarming titles. In reality, the risks are no different from manually installing an APK on Android, which noone has kicked up a fuss about.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoWhat apps do you consider useful and safe on that store?
- nathankunicki 8y agoI consider that argument irrelevant. I shouldn't have to justify the apps that I want to use to you or my phones manufacturer, just know that there are (or maybe) other apps that I wish to install, that Apple (or you) may not necessarily approve of. When I pay $1,000+ on a phone, I don't want its usefulness to be restricted to what Apple says I can do with it.
- dkonofalski 8y ago
- writepub 8y agoWith Apple, if the adversary is a nation state that is willing to fight to affect it's bottom line, Apple just falls in line, like an obedient lap dog. Cases in point: China iCloud & Saudi app that tracks women - in both cases Apple did what the respective governments demanded, while making a show of force in America over the FBI's request to unlock an actual terrorist's phone. In this case, things can get interesting if these companies have Chinese government backing. WeChat went through a similar fight with Apple, where Apple was trying to shove it's app store guidelines as justification for denying extensions on WeChat, but as usual, Apple curled up in the corner the moment there Chinese government got involved.
- writepub 8y agoAll of this could be prevented if Apple allowed sideloading unappoved, but non-security threatening apps. Like when the Steam gaming app that posed zero security threats, that I very much want to use, got banned by Apple for posing a competitive threat!
- joemi 8y agoHow do you determine if it's non-security threatening, though? Isn't that considered an approval process?
- writepub 8y agoOne way is to explicitly prompt the permission-requests prior to actual syscall invocation (as against at install time). The user can then choose to approve or deny. For instance, if a file-manager app is asking to read your SMS, you can opt to deny the permission, unless you're willing to risk the app misusing your data. What they do on the Mac is also acceptable - where they warn you about running apps from unapproved publishers.
- ClassyJacket 8y agoThis is how the iPhone has worked since 2008.
- ikeboy 8y agoYou can if you sign it with your own, free, certificate. It will just expire quickly if free and require constant updating but surely that's an acceptable price to pay.
- wolfgke 8y agoWhere is the problem? If users install enterprise certificates despite the shown warnings, they want to take the risk.
- saagarjha 8y agoThese are the warnings you get: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204460 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204460. I don't think this adequately describes the potential risk.
- wolfgke 8y agoOK, the warning could perhaps be better designed. But I still don't see the huge problem: "Trusted" has a very strong meaning when used for any computing device. So this is already a really, really strong warning sign (safeguard 1). Next, you explicitly have to go to the settings to manually trust the certificate (safeguard 2). This gives you a lot of time (i.e. you don't accidentally "click/touch OK") to inform yourself intensively of the consequences of the decision (safeguard 3). Even after that according to this link (no screenshot is shown), you explicitly have to confirm your decision again (safeguard 4). Now according to this link, you have to install the apps from the now-trusted developer manually (safeguard 5). So I see at least 5 levels of safeguards that Apple introduced.
- mnm1 8y agoIllicit? What law or statute was broken? Breaking Apple's TOS still is, afaik, not illicit or illegal. Has this changed recently? Has someone been prosecuted under the CFAA or other law for breaking a company's TOS? Last I heard, it still wasn't illicit and the issue has not been heard by the Supremes: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-down-violating-websites-terms-service-not-crime https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-... Talk about inaccurate, bad reporting...
- Someone 8y agoFrom the description, it seems it certainly is an (illicit app) store. Also, ‘illicit’ doesn’t necessarily mean “unlawful”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illicit#synonyms https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illicit#synonyms also mentions “not permitted”, and Apple doesn’t permit you to use an enterprise certificate in this way.
- mnm1 8y agoBy that definition, Apple's own store is illicit because I don't permit any apps from it. Except that Apple does permit these stores to exist so by that exact definition they are not illicit. Either way, it doesn't make sense, it's confusing, and it's shitty, inaccurate writing.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoWait, so you shouldn't have rights to a device you paid for? Yeah, you're not going to sell me on this line of bullshit. The amount of money you pay for an apple is a fucking purchase. So why do they maintain control of it? Eh?