3 ms·

> As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work

> As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work fine with tracking disabled until a given date, or when used within Apple’s IP address range, or when in Cupertino, or if a remote call it makes tells it so, or when some server or DNS entry exists or does not exist. Just like Volkswagen did. Short of providing Apple your code and then perusing through it each time (which isn’t feasible), they can’t catch everything. Now, a featured app? They really messed up here.

Someone 5y ago
_If_ this app did that kind of thing, I don’t see much of a difference. You can’t expect them to catch it at review. If picking it for being featured happens closely in time to that (likely, IMO) you can’t expect them to catch it at that time, either. That leaves them being paranoid, and periodically rechecking all featured apps. Even if they do that, there still will be a time window in which the app misbehaves.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Sounds like the vaunted App Store review isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
  - Someone 5y ago
    If an app can make a http request, parse the response, and do different things depending on the result, it’s hard to prove it won’t crash on receiving invalid input without access to the source code (often even with access to it. If that were easy, there wouldn’t be that many vulnerabilities from exploiting such crashes) If Apple required the source code, I predict an outcry “they’ll steal our code, just as they steal our ideas”. And no, LLVM Bitcode won’t help here, even ignoring (AFAIK) that they don’t require you to provide it (which would lead to another outcry “we can’t use gcc”) It’s too low level for that.

3 ms·

> As to the crashing: the app _might_ do all kinds of shenanigans to make it through the app store approval process. Things I can think of are that it may work

by colejohnson66 5y ago

Someone 5y ago
_If_ this app did that kind of thing, I don’t see much of a difference. You can’t expect them to catch it at review. If picking it for being featured happens closely in time to that (likely, IMO) you can’t expect them to catch it at that time, either. That leaves them being paranoid, and periodically rechecking all featured apps. Even if they do that, there still will be a time window in which the app misbehaves.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Sounds like the vaunted App Store review isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
  - Someone 5y ago
    If an app can make a http request, parse the response, and do different things depending on the result, it’s hard to prove it won’t crash on receiving invalid input without access to the source code (often even with access to it. If that were easy, there wouldn’t be that many vulnerabilities from exploiting such crashes) If Apple required the source code, I predict an outcry “they’ll steal our code, just as they steal our ideas”. And no, LLVM Bitcode won’t help here, even ignoring (AFAIK) that they don’t require you to provide it (which would lead to another outcry “we can’t use gcc”) It’s too low level for that.