I am writing an iOS app and have a dilemma. The app will be used to test the BLE protocol of devices coming off our production line. It needs to be very simple, It is a one button app that automatically connects to devices and tests commands in our protocol and gives a pass or fail result. If it passes the device id is sent to our API to be entered in our database.
My problem is I don't want the user to have to login, but I need to send a username and password to the API to log in. This means the username and password has to be included in the app. I am trying to find out the most secure way to do this. I initially thought I would include a plist in the app with the credentials, enter them in keychain, then delete the plist. However I don't believe you can delete a file included in the app bundle (I get a 513 permission error).
I have 2 questions. Is it secure to include credentials in code? Is there a better way to do this?
Thanks!
No.
Use API to retrieve credentials and store to keychain. Simple call to firebase could solve this. Or use your own backend with your custom “security”.
But even obtaining via API don’t give you 100% security. Everything depends. API solution gives you flexibility and ability to support different versions with different credentials.
Related
I have an app that uses the Twitter API where users can authenticate via twitter and retweet/like/follow through my app. Randomly this week the logs are showing "code: 89 Invalid or expired token".
Naturally, I go login to twitter to see the status of my app, and nothing seems out of the ordinary. I saw others with this issue had success regenerating their keys and replacing them in their application.
This didn't help.
One important thing to note is nothing has changed in the code of my application for the last 3-4 months, so I doubt it's anything in there. It's been working for over two years without any issue.
The thing I suspect the most is perhaps Twitter decided to suspend my app; Although, I don't see anywhere that is the case, and I thought I'd receive an email from them about it if it were.
I'm at a loss and would appreciate some possible solutions or alternative avenues I can pursue to find the culprit.
The keys associated with your app are the API Key (Consumer Token) and API secret key (Consumer Secret). The error you're getting is for the Access token, which belongs to the user. It sounds like the user associated with that request needs to authorize your app again before it can operate again with their access key. This can happen if the user removes authorization for your app by visiting their Settings/Privacy and safety/Apps and sessions.
If you were using your own access token in a scenario like single-user authorization, then regenerating the key might work, but in this case, the only way to get new keys for that user is for them to go through the sign-in process to authorize your app again. e.g. you could log who the user was that the error occurred on and send them a notification to re-authorize.
I want to create a new iOS app.
and for this app I have some security questions
Example
The first start the user log in with username and password. When the log in is correct The user receive a api code. Just This code Will be stored in the app
So every time they use a make a request to the side like calling for the use a list I don't send the username and password I will send the api code for authentication.
Like this
https://example.com/api/{APICODE}/getUserList
The answer will be json
So my Questions are
- how to securely store the api code in the app
- is there a better way to make the requests
- I will store the requested data in the app, what is the best way, SQLite or plain files with json
The reason is That the app works without Internet
Thanks for help
Save secured data in the Keychain. For other you may use UserDefaults, files, SQLite DBs, CoreData
I'm curious if there is a way to safely pass content between apps on iOS. The ultimate goal is to implement oauth between two ios apps.
Since apps are not guaranteed to have unique url schemes, this option is out.
I have considered using keychain groups, but do not have experience with this. It looks like an app needs to specify exactly which apps can access the keychain items.
Are there any other options? Is there some sort of identifier (such as android bundle ID) that can be used to verify the apps during a request?
You can use URL schemes for this.
The basic process
You'll have a ServerApp and many ClientApps. The ServerApp listens to an URL-scheme like serverapp://. The client then can make a call to the server to ask it for authentication. The client has to implement an URL-scheme too. E.g. ClientAppOne implements the URL scheme clientapp1://. The server takes as parameter a backlink to the client app. E.g. the client calls the URL serverapp://auth?back=clientapp1%3A%2F%2Fserverapp-auth (here the backlink is clientapp1://serverapp-auth and has been urlencoded).
The server then checks the users identity, asks him for permission, password, etc. and then uses the backlink to provide the data. How the backlink works exactly is application specific, but you usually need at least 2 parts: an access token and a username. E.g. a backlink will then be clientapp1://serverapp-auth?success=1&token=fi83ia8wfzi3s8fi8s3f8si8sf&user=robert or maybe in case of error clientapp1://serverapp-auth?success=0&errno=421. The client then needs to verify the accesstoken through some public (or private) API, e.g. https://serverapp.example.com/userdetails?apikey=fai83jw93fj93389j&token=fi83ia8wfzi3s8fi8s3f8si8sf. The server will return some structured response.
Necessary components
an URL scheme on the server App
an URL scheme on each client App
an SDK that is to be included into each client app and that handels the details of authentication, and a standard UI component (e.g. facebook has a standard button that says "login with facebook", so the ServerApp needs some re-recognizable button that says something like "login with ServerApp")
a server that provides services that can be accessed through the access token.
a defined API that explains how the client has to communicate with the server
an SDK to be included into the client that handels such client-server-communication (should be part of the SDK mentioned in component 3.)
maybe a wiki that documents all of the steps above, so that you and other developers dont lose track
a way to invalidate access tokens, and a way for the client to detect if an access token has been invalidated. furthermore, if the user changes his password, all access tokens should be invalidated.
Random notes
in your client app you can check if the serverapp is installed by calling [[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"serverapp://auth"]].
the URL schemes should be sufficently collission-free. These URLs are never seen by users, only by developers, so they don't have to be beautiful. You can e.g. append the iTunes-Connect-App-ID to your URL-scheme, like serverapp1234567://. This will greatly reduce the possibility that someday some other app will use the same URL scheme.
I need to use Twitter Oauth to login my windows phone app,
What i need exactly is
1)when the user click twitter log in button from my app, i need to show the twitter llog in page in a browser,
2)when he enters his credentials and accept the app, then i should get the user information like, name, gender, bday, what ever i can take.
That,s it, then i can close the browser and make my app active.
I just need to make the user to log in via twitter.
I referred lot of examples, that are all quit confusing and doing all the stuffs in twiiter.
I tried this example
and got this error
'TweetSharp.TwitterService' does not contain a definition fError 2 'TweetSharp.TwitterService' does not contain a definition for 'GetAccessToken' and no extension method 'GetAccessToken' accepting a first argument of type 'TweetSharp.TwitterService' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
and i tried enter link description here
failed on that too.
Can anybody help me to do the authentication via twitter for my app.
Thank you.
I tried this example and got success, I contacted the person who have posted that example and got help from him to solve the issues raised from this example.
Actually this Example works fine for twitter integration,
What you have to do is
1)Register your app in twitter, here the link for app registration,
log in and register your app.
2)Make sure you have given the Call Back URL(i forget to give that, and that makes me face lot of issues)
3)Note down the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret and Call back url(we need specify this 3 in our code)
4)Go to Settings, and set your app access to Read and Write
5)down load the above link and change the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret and Call back url as per your app, and then run the example, it will work fine.
Thank you.
If you just want to authenticate using Twitter and don't want to post anything, perhaps you can try Azure Mobile Service Authentication. You can find more information here: mobile services authentication
To my understanding creating a smartphone apps based on a site is to simply create an API for the website and to output the data in XML, JSON. In my case JSON has Ruby on Rails has it built it in it. In theory all I have to is to read the event.json page and read the attribute and on phonegap to read it and build a logic from it.
However, in my phone app, I would like to allow user to log in before entering and in fact on the web-base I am using the devise gem to manage my user management. How am I supposed to allow user to log in from device using phonegap? Should I read an API JSON that showcase all users but then that may cause a lots of security issues, is there a device documentation on that specific issue, or should I scrap device and just make an authentication system from scratch?
Devise provides for an auth-token to be used for login. This works well with JSON APIs as you can set a header to include the auth-token to identify the user. Your login form would just be responsible for getting an auth-token from valid credentials. SSL can help to secure this information on the wire.
I created a Gem based on rack_iphone which store the session
in the localStorage and and upon opening a application from a home screen shortcut
the application take the cookie if present from the localStorage and the sent it to the server
Hope this work for you