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> Personally, I blame Apple with its supposed "safe" walled garden more for the many stalkerware products than Android where the ability to install apps from th

> Personally, I blame Apple with its supposed "safe" walled garden more for the many stalkerware products than Android where the ability to install apps from third parties exists. Their whole walled garden shtick revolves around how they protect their users, after all, which rings pretty hollow when they allow apps like these to exist on their platform. Shows how much Apple really cares about your safety! These kinds of apps do not exist on the App Store, and are absolutely impossible on iOS outside the realm of security firms and black hats with zero days. Not sure what you're talking about here. Of course with physical access to the device, almost anything is possible. But the key issue here is Google allowing these things to fester on the Play store.

saagarjha 3y ago
Disclaimer: Google pays me to work on this. They do not pay me to talk about it online. Stalkerware does exist on the App Store. The specific things that are possible differ on each platform (for example, getting access to calls and texts is a lot more involved on iOS and most apps will just let you unlock the device and access it directly instead) but there is plenty of potential for abuse on both platforms. In many ways the model is better on iOS with regards to these kinds of things, but we regularly deal with victims that are in situations where there does not exist a platform that I am aware of that can effectively stop stalkerware completely.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  Can you link to an example of a stalkerware app on iOS?
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    On iOS this is possible through management profiles. People use these as parental control apps: For example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parental-control-app-ourpact/id954029412 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parental-control-app-ourpact/i... This even allows you to live view a screen. Apple doesn’t really tell you that you have a management profile setup.
    - ylk 3y ago
      I thought emergency reset is supposed to protect you from abusive people but I skimmed the support article and it seems like emergency reset does not remove management profiles: https://support.apple.com/en-asia/guide/personal-safety/ips2aad835e1/web https://support.apple.com/en-asia/guide/personal-safety/ips2... I guess it’s hard to balance, because a company probably doesn’t want their employees uninstalling MDM profiles.
      - jeroenhd 3y ago
        > I guess it’s hard to balance, because a company probably doesn’t want their employees uninstalling MDM profiles. I don't really understand why you would need technical measures for that. Surely a disconnected phone would quickly be noticed, and appropriate action can be taken by the business itself?
        TechBro8615 3y ago
        Detecting disconnections is never an easy problem to solve because you need to account for false positives like dead battery or lack of service. The battery could be dead for an entire night while someone sleeps. But it would only take twenty minutes to remove the MDM profile, exfiltrate company data, and then restore the profile.
        aaomidi 3y ago
        This is why I think the future needs to be getting rid of these management profiles. They do nothing other than buy folks a false sense of security.
- ylk 3y ago
  Does lockdown mode not help here because abusers know the device passcode?
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Lockdown mode is largely concerned with reducing attack surface for sophisticated remote attackers. The threat model is pretty different from this kind of stalkerware.
jeroenhd 3y ago
These apps do definitely exist on the App Store, as well as on Google Play and every commercial app store I know of. They obviously don't market themselves as stalkerware, but there are plenty of "parental control" apps out there that aren't meant for tracking kids (every mobile OS can already do that out of the box, after all). One example I quickly found is this thing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/eyezy-find-my-friends/id1575693779 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/eyezy-find-my-friends/id157569... At first glance this may seem inconspicuous enough, but then they sell services like these: https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield that will hide these apps on jailbroken devices.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  > At first glance this may seem inconspicuous enough, but then they sell services like these: https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield that will hide these apps on jailbroken devices. And that is the key. Sure you can jailbreak an iOS device, and all bets are off. But there is no way to hide an app from the user in iOS that would comply with the App Store ToS or ever be accepted for publication. Also crucially this does not give access to calls texts and images the way the Android apps do.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Stalkerware hiding their spyware without jailbreaks is typically accomplished through MDM profiles. I linked the jailbreak page because of how obvious the abuse is. Text and image extraction doesn't even need an app, stalkerware uses iCloud credentials to fetch those, together with location history.

saagarjha 3y ago

Disclaimer: Google pays me to work on this. They do not pay me to talk about it online. Stalkerware does exist on the App Store. The specific things that are possible differ on each platform (for example, getting access to calls and texts is a lot more involved on iOS and most apps will just let you unlock the device and access it directly instead) but there is plenty of potential for abuse on both platforms. In many ways the model is better on iOS with regards to these kinds of things, but we regularly deal with victims that are in situations where there does not exist a platform that I am aware of that can effectively stop stalkerware completely.

TechBro8615 3y ago
Can you link to an example of a stalkerware app on iOS?
- aaomidi 3y ago
  On iOS this is possible through management profiles. People use these as parental control apps: For example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parental-control-app-ourpact/id954029412 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parental-control-app-ourpact/i... This even allows you to live view a screen. Apple doesn’t really tell you that you have a management profile setup.
  - ylk 3y ago
    I thought emergency reset is supposed to protect you from abusive people but I skimmed the support article and it seems like emergency reset does not remove management profiles: https://support.apple.com/en-asia/guide/personal-safety/ips2aad835e1/web https://support.apple.com/en-asia/guide/personal-safety/ips2... I guess it’s hard to balance, because a company probably doesn’t want their employees uninstalling MDM profiles.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      > I guess it’s hard to balance, because a company probably doesn’t want their employees uninstalling MDM profiles. I don't really understand why you would need technical measures for that. Surely a disconnected phone would quickly be noticed, and appropriate action can be taken by the business itself?
      - TechBro8615 3y ago
        Detecting disconnections is never an easy problem to solve because you need to account for false positives like dead battery or lack of service. The battery could be dead for an entire night while someone sleeps. But it would only take twenty minutes to remove the MDM profile, exfiltrate company data, and then restore the profile.
        aaomidi 3y ago
        This is why I think the future needs to be getting rid of these management profiles. They do nothing other than buy folks a false sense of security.
ylk 3y ago
Does lockdown mode not help here because abusers know the device passcode?
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Lockdown mode is largely concerned with reducing attack surface for sophisticated remote attackers. The threat model is pretty different from this kind of stalkerware.

jeroenhd 3y ago

These apps do definitely exist on the App Store, as well as on Google Play and every commercial app store I know of. They obviously don't market themselves as stalkerware, but there are plenty of "parental control" apps out there that aren't meant for tracking kids (every mobile OS can already do that out of the box, after all). One example I quickly found is this thing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/eyezy-find-my-friends/id1575693779 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/eyezy-find-my-friends/id157569... At first glance this may seem inconspicuous enough, but then they sell services like these: https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield that will hide these apps on jailbroken devices.

ramesh31 3y ago
> At first glance this may seem inconspicuous enough, but then they sell services like these: https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield https://www.eyezy.com/invisible-shield that will hide these apps on jailbroken devices. And that is the key. Sure you can jailbreak an iOS device, and all bets are off. But there is no way to hide an app from the user in iOS that would comply with the App Store ToS or ever be accepted for publication. Also crucially this does not give access to calls texts and images the way the Android apps do.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Stalkerware hiding their spyware without jailbreaks is typically accomplished through MDM profiles. I linked the jailbreak page because of how obvious the abuse is. Text and image extraction doesn't even need an app, stalkerware uses iCloud credentials to fetch those, together with location history.