I have a doubt if any one can access the files and document directories of an iphone app. Need to check if anyone can access the files if they get the device. I have a sqlite file in my app whose data is sensitive i dont want other users to hack or access it.
Please let me know how we can access any apps database.
It will depend on the user, basically, if the user has set a passcode, it will encrypt all data on the device. If the user has not set a passcode, then data will live unencrypted. As a rule of thumb, you must assume if the information lives on the device, that information might be at risk.
Here is what apple has to say about it:
Data protection is available for devices that offer hardware
encryption, including iPhone 3GS and later, all iPad models, and iPod
touch (3rd generation and later). Data protection enhances the
built-in hardware encryption by protecting the hardware encryption
keys with your passcode. This provides an additional layer of
protection for your email messages attachments, and third-party
applications.]1
Also:
On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages
(including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes
content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your
passcode.
Related
We have a requirement where we need to login in to our application using fingerprints. We do understand that apple touch id can be used for authentication purpose and only returns success or failure in the response.
However, in our case one iPhone device will be shared by 5 to 8 users and we need to map an unique userId with each saved fingerprint to identify the user.
Is there any way to map a userid with the saved fingerprint (any unique number returned from an api like Fingerprint1, Fingerprint2 will do)?
Or Is there any alternative solution to login to our iOS application using biometric data?
We dont't want to add an extra fingerprint scanner device.
No, You can't achieve this in iOS. According to Apple about biometric
Touch ID doesn't store any images of your fingerprint. It stores only
a mathematical representation of your fingerprint. It isn't possible
for someone to reverse engineer your actual fingerprint image from
this mathematical representation. The chip in your device also
includes an advanced security architecture called the Secure Enclave
which was developed to protect passcode and fingerprint data.
Fingerprint data is encrypted and protected with a key available only
to the Secure Enclave. Fingerprint data is used only by the Secure
Enclave to verify that your fingerprint matches the enrolled
fingerprint data. The Secure Enclave is walled off from the rest of
the chip and the rest of iOS. Therefore, iOS and other apps never
access your fingerprint data, it's never stored on Apple servers, and
it's never backed up to iCloud or anywhere else. Only Touch ID uses
it, and it can't be used to match against other fingerprint databases.
Now come to main point.
Now days iPhone X series is more popular than other, and they don't support Touch ID, also you can store only one Face ID per device. not like the Touch ID (with multiple finger).
Or after certain wrong try of finger print the device will locked and you have provided Passcode, This is also one per device.
No, there's no way for you to know how many and which finger was used for biometrics, the secure enclave only lets you know if the biometric check has passed or not.
Is it possible to read my own fingerprints without using Touch ID?
iOS and other apps never access your fingerprint data, it's never
stored on Apple servers, and it's never backed up to iCloud or
anywhere else. Only Touch ID uses it, and it can't be used to match
against other fingerprint databases.
Because I can not get access to the iPhone fingerprint database, I would like to use the iPhone integrated fingerprint scanner and create my own fingerprint.
iOS and other apps never access your fingerprint data
This statement clearly states you can't get any data from fingerprint sensor. All information is encrypted and stored on device which your application can never access being sandboxed.
I want to develop an iPhone application which can track the contents (such as location information, device hardware/sw information, contacts …etc) being collected from your device by all the applications and give a report to the end user at end of each week.
Because, I believe that end user should be notified about what information being collected by his device and sent to which servers to store them.
I Googled it and read few articles as well, but all pointed to the conclusion that a given application cannot (or restricted by Apple) peak into operations of other apps and collect any information about what those applications are doing.
But I've seen this Onovo Count app http://www.onavo.com/apps/iphone_count is collecting the data usage of all the other apps in your device, so can we just go few steps beyond that get this done ?
From the looks of it Onovo Count redirects all device traffic through a VPN. I presume their servers look at the host names of the traffic and record it against the device. When looking at the app, you're just looking at a dump of the data for your device.
For the rest of what you want to do, it is not possible on a standard device, you'd need to have it jail broken or something.
I need to develop some simple demonstration of an application reading a file over HTTPS and saving it to the local memory (internal or external) of an iOS device (e.g., an iPhone), in a way that it is only accessible to it. So, application-specific file encryption is required.
The "Advanced App Tricks" page of the Apple iOS Developer Library, in the "Protecting Data Using On-Disk Encryption" section, seems to imply that a file encrypted on disk, via either Default (i.e., iOS filesystem) or "Complete" Data Protection, would be accessible by all applications, after the user types the device's lock code.
If that is the case, could someone please suggest the best way of implementing file encryption per-application on an iOS device, with a password request when a user tries to open the file? Any sample code would also be very helpful.
Also, does "software encryption" apply to iOS anymore? Both Default and Data Protection encryption seem to be hardware-based.
Thanks!
Application files are not accessible between Apps. Each App is individually sandboxed.
In all cases the document is talking about the access available to "Your App"/ It is never accessible to another App. But see below. Sone of the protection options help cover what and when "Your App" has access to the file when in the background.
JailBroken iOS devices will have greater file system access so adding "Data Protection" will protect from this vector.
See the document session on The iOS Environment and particularly the section "The App Sandbox" iOS Environment
Hardware encryption: There are a few things that hardware encryption provide. 1. Speed. 2. The encryption method can not be changed, that is as with software encryption there is no code that could be compromised. 3. The key can not be accessed. The key is in some manner placed/created in the hardware and the hardware will does not allow read access (there are occasionally very secure export capabilities). The device is asked to perform crypto functions on data and returns data. Examples of this are smart cards, HSMs, TPMs and TPM Equivalents, the iPhone has a TPM Equivalent and that is used for the Keychain. By chance my wife and I were discussing this very topic yesterday. :-)
As far as I know, for encryption of bulk data, iOS does use special hardware instructions to aid AES encryption for speed but that would not be considered hardware encryption due to the key being available in software. There is a little guessing here due to the lack of information about the Apple A-series ARM chips, it is true of the Intel chips in Macs.
The client is concerned about safety of the data application uses and stores locally on device (e.g. they want to prevent reading our data files even on jailbroken iPhones). So I wonder - what are the possible ways to ensure data safety on iPhone?
Edit:
I'm thinking about 2 ways of storing data - a bunch of xml files (maximum size - about 1MB) or sqlite database. I'm more inclined to the 2nd variant but still not sure
You might want to check out this article - Protecting resources in iPhone and iPad apps. It talks about a scheme to encrypt app resources at build time, which can then be decrypted when needed by your app. Decryption happens in-memory so unprotected temporary files are not left on the filesystem. You can even load encrypted HTML, PDF & images straight into a UIWebView.
For transparency's sake: I wrote that article and it is hosted on my own website.
Any time code is running on physical hardware that's out of your control, it is vulnerable - the iPhone must have the ability to decode the data for it to be usable, and if the iPhone has that ability, so does the user. If the data is valuable enough, someone will break your encryption.
The movie industry spent millions on their DVD DRM. It got cracked in a few weeks.
The commoncrypto library, available on the phone, supports symmetric encryption. You can store the key in the keychain, which is itself asymmetrically encrypted. The key to decrypt the keychain is baked into the hardware so you'd need to go to some lengths to retrieve the data.
(e.g. they want to prevent reading our data files even on jailbroken iPhones). you may use localytics mobile analytics(open source) to find out whether the application has been used in Jail broken iphone or not.. They have premium options also..Lot of mobile analytics are available.you can check..