I am trying to build a mobile monitoring tool/app for iOS without Jailbreak. The only possible way to perfectly access all installed app's content is through iCloudKit.
Also I found Apple's MDM come a little close to this for BYOD devices but yet accessing individual application's data is not possible.
During all this process, I came across some website fonemonitor and phonemonitor (with and without) who claim to do the same without Jail Break.
So here is my question is it possible to take any application's data if we get access to the users iCloud account? Also, are all public, private and shared data accessible via iCloudKit? As the documentation clearly states private data is untouched.
How does app monitoring work for any iOS Devices through these websites. Any lead would actually help!
Related
There seem to be a few different ways for an app to store data in iCloud (iCloud Drive Documents, Core Data with iCloud Sync, CloudKit Private Databases, Key Value Pairs etc) but I'm not sure if that's all. Which of these different types of iCloud storage appear to the user in the iCloud 'Manage Storage' menu (i.e. some apps don't appear at all whereas others list 'Documents and Data' whereas others list files that can be individually removed but don't appear in iCloud Drive)? I'm trying to figure out but the documentation's a bit vague on this.
Aaron,
There are three "Apple owned" places you can store data for an iOS device, on the device itself, in an iCloud Drive and/or in the iCloudKit database.
The iCloudKit database has within it three more places. Two of those are databases in the true sense of the word, so structured areas you can store information within, namely key/value pairs and CloudKit. A CloudKit database itself breaks down into two more principle divisions, public and private areas.
Their accessibility is governed on a user/app basis. So you as a developer can opt to use or indeed make your files accessible on them or not. The rules governing who can access what can be confusing, especially as they can/have been changing over different iOS releases.
The iCloud Drive is the most and least flexible, you can store everything on it but you cannot share anything within it, except with yourself.
The iCloud key/pair database comes next, except it is used exclusively by an application to store application state/preferences only [it has a very limited space], again you can share it with yourself only.
The CloudKit database comes next, again something that would be used on an application by application basis. So apps do not share databases and cannot access other app databases, unless they come from the same author and sharing is a built in functionality that has been explicitly intended.
That said, the CloudKit database has two distinct areas a private and a public one. The private area can be accessed by a single user of an app, the public area can be accessed by anybody using said app on any iOS device.
CloudKit documents are an area where Apple store documents from its apps principally, so keynotes, pages and numbers; although they have opened it up somewhat in recent years. They can be shared with other users too using on of the apps designed specifically to store data within the iCloudKit documents area. It is the closest you'll get to a dropbox under iOS, short of using dropbox fof course.
Finally you can store data on your iOS device itself and opt in to share that with others on the same device too thru Apple's files app, although that that is a very recent status quo, so only available for apps designed to run under iOS 11 explicitly opted into the new status quo.
All that said, Apple counts all the places as one in the same when it comes to storage limits, be warned if you want design/build an app using cloudKit storage; if Apple deem you did so recklessly, you won't get a foot in on the app store.
As final comment Apple security policies are designed as a general rule to ensure you as a user have quite fine grained control over who accesses their data, it was/is an intentional decision on their part to protect you from yourself. As a general rule, it works well; which is why you see almost no viruses under iOS.
I am developing an application for security purpose which has 1 requirement as "Wipe out iPhone or i pad data completely if device is stolen".
While doing search for this functionality, I came across one application "Find My iPhone" here which supports this feature of "remotely wipe out all data".
(http://www.howtogeek.com/77158/how-to-remotely-lock-or-wipe-your-ios-5-device/)
But i want to this functionality through programmatically in my app.Can someone give me a solution for this problem?
And is it possible to do this functionality through programmatically?
You cannot completely wipe a standard iPhone's data from an app. The app runs in a sandbox environment so you cannot access data from other apps or iOS itself meaning that you cannot wipe it. That being said, you could wipe photos and contacts programmatically as long as the user grants you access to contacts and photos.
There is NO WAY that Apple would let programmers wipe data remotely for the entire device.
Instead of doing that, maybe you should have functionality in your app where if server returns a particular flag, you would delete all the data stored locally on your app, by you (like login details for your app, personal data stored in Documents). I suggest that, because I've done it before.
I want to create an app which has the following features.
Track friends / family members location
Locate/track the stolen device location
Lock the device, delete the device datas by using desktop or by SMS.
Most of the above features are provided by Apple's "Find my iPhone" app. But I just want to know whether is it possible to create such an app.
From my understanding, Apple wont let the developers to use private API's and they wont allow to erase datas (like Messages, Calls details) remotely.
Please suggest me some ideas.
If you create any app which directly competes with any of the apples build app will be rejected by appstore.. But most of the above things you can do with private api's and with the help of a web service..
It wasn't possible prior to iOS7. App was not able to respond to any remote calls. There is a new API which "can" be used to solve similar things: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/ios-7-sdk-mutlitasking-enhancements/ or http://www.objc.io/issue-5/multitasking.html (Remote notifications). You may be able to track your friends or stolen device, but not to lock or erase it.
There is a way to remotely erase the iPhone without Apple's Find My iPhone - via Exchange account. There are some open source implementations of MS Exchange, so there may be a chance to make a service which would be able to wipe the device. But even when you make that service, there will be a need to add the "exchange account" into the iDevice. I am not aware of any function which can do so programmatically.
Anyway - You can do an app which is similar to Apple's apps, but it must be somehow different. It must provide some special content or functionality, otherwise it will be rejected.
just to be more specific, I would like to know more about the system files that can be accessed with regards to a jailbroken phone.
From what I understand, each ios application has its own sandbox. A phone has root access once it is jailbroken, allowing creation of 3rd party system applications which result in accessing the system files. However, if I am not wrong, the sandbox is still there just that it has lesser restrictions hence allowing accessing of system files?(not sure about this part too).
So for a jailbroken phone, what kind of critical system files are we able to access from our created application that will go through the sandbox and which are not accessible from a unjailbroken phone? Is contact list a part of the critical system files, although I believe we are still able to get contact list without a jailbroken phone using the Address Book frameworks.
I may be wrong, but my term of Critical system files refers to system information that normal users would not like others to get hold of so I was thinking if contact list is part of it even though it does not require a jailbroken phone.
Without taking Tweaks into consideration, an app is able to read/write/execute in the root directory /. Tweaks are able to do whatever they want (just like the app would - even an Apple pre-installed app), depending on where they are hook-ing. For example, a tweak I was working on for MobileSMS (the SMS app) can give me the passcode of your iCloud account stored in the keychain by default.
Long story short, jailbreaks equals zero security for an average user. On the other hand, there is only one exploit (at least to my knowledge) currently, that attacked iOS and came from GeorgiaTech a few months ago, hidden in an app on the App Store.
I am currently coding a backup app for iOS, and I want to have options to let the user back up things like Application Data (other app's documents, etc,) Contacts, Safari Bookmarks, and all that fun stuff.
I'd like to know if that's possible, how I'd do it, and where those files are stored, and most importantly, if this is actually allowed by Apple. I read through their docs, and I haven't seen anything that speaks against it.
It's not possible. Your app isn't even capable of reading the documents from other apps. This is accomplished via sandboxing. Every read/write your application tries to do to the filesystem is checked by the kernel to ensure you're staying within your sandbox. The documents belonging to other apps are outside of your sandbox, so you cannot see them.
They aren't allowed. All iOS apps are sandboxed, and can't access other apps' data.
Your app, naturally is in a sandbox, which does not allow you to read outside of the app. If you jailbreak your device, then yes, it is possible.