In our applications the user autentications is based on the serial number.It seems that in ios 8 it is not possible to get the serialnumber.Is any other way?
Thanks in advance.
Apple deprecated access to a unique-per-device UUID (known as uniqueIdentifier as of iOS 6. As of iOS 7, they also blocked access to MAC querying the address, and other sorts of unique identifiers. Sometime between iOS 6 and today, they started rejecting any application that accesses this property.
There are two replacement APIs that might help: on UIDevice, there is identifierForVendor, that is consistent across your apps. And there is also an entire framework, AdSupport, who's job is to provide an identifier that can be used for advertising networks. This identifier has the limitation of people can change it whenever they want, so you cannot rely on it being consistent across multiple launches.
The hint Apple is trying to pass on here is "you cannot consistently, uniquely identify people per device across multiple apps that are not your own".
In addition to zadr excellent explanation I would like to not iCloud as another possible solution:
Simply store a value (as file or key-value) in iCloud. Only disadvantage of this approach is, that you will have to add the iCloud entitlement to your app if your app does not use iCloud yet. On the other hand there are some advantages
Very little / none additional effort necessary if your app already uses iCloud
No additional Frameworsk like AdSupport necessary
The saved value will be consistent between devices and app re-install
More than one app can share the ID by using the same iCloud (ubiquity container)
Of course in some cases this might be a little overdone but in other this can be a handy solution.
I would recommend using uniqueIdentifier as suggested above but saving in keychain. This way its reliably available to you all the time, and can be used to track the user.
Related
I am planning on using DeviceCheckor indentifierForVendor to ensure that the same device is not being used to redeem multiple times the same gift (free money for example sake) offered to new users. I am wondering however, if it is possible to trick this system on a jailbroken device? Or using a custom simulator or a botnet (do iOS botnets exist?)?
I haven't tried it myself, but I think it is possible to change the bundle identifier, resign the app and side load it to your device.
This will change the change the identifier for both DeviceCheck and indentifierForVendor.
Now, for this to really affect you, the user needs to get a hold of the ipa. Which is getting increasingly difficult with the newer versions of iOS.
If you are interested in trying what I've discussed, refer to this link.
https://coderwall.com/p/qwqpnw/resign-ipa-with-new-cfbundleidentifier-and-certificate
And probably AirSign (much easier). Its a paid app for the Mac. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/51845/airsign
A friend asked me to find a way to change the plist property LSApplicationQueriesSchemes from within the iOS app itself to added new schema url at runtime. The app is distributed with an Enterprise account. I told him this is impossible for me, but I don't find anything about it to provide an evidence. Could someone provide me some useful information (e.g. a link) to support my thought?
It's not possible. This is a measure Apple explicitly added to prevent developers from abusing canOpenURL to figure out what apps users had installed. Certain company was misusing this method - even updating their list dynamically - to learn what apps users had and installed and because of this Apple decided that your app should try to open other apps that it has defined at development time only. Even if you did find a way around this, Apple would most definitely fix it in the next release and break the app from that point onwards. Furthermore, the Info.plist is in your App Bundle, which is read-only.
I am working on an enterprise app and need access to programmatically retrieve the device's serial number. Is there an API or any documentation on how to retrieve this in iOS 8? From what I can tell, this functionality has been removed in iOS 8.
Is there a suitable replacement identifier for the serial? I need something that is reliable and will never change even if the device is reset.
It will be for enterprise usage so App Store approval is not a concern.
You're up a creek here. The two "tracking" features are Advertising Identifier and Identifier for Vendor. The former can be reset within the Settings app quite easily while the latter will reset once the user uninstalls all apps with the root bundle identifier associated with the app suite. Both also change with a device reset of course.
If you're deploying the app with an MDM solution you will have access to that device's UDID as it still flows forward to MDM servers, you just can't access it programmatically in your code. The complete deprecation of UDID, serial number and MAC address (even with private APIs) stomped all over some custom utilities I wrote within our Enterprise to try and accomplish something similar to what you're looking to do. If you find somethingthats consistent I'd love to see the follow-up!
EDIT:
I had an epiphany while circling back to this situation again. If you are in fact using AirWatch (I can't speak to Mobile Iron, etc) you can setup the console to send a keychain value to each device at the time of app install. From there the app will be able to consume the value AirWatch sends down. The same goes for any attribute that AirWatch harvests for the device (serial, UDID, MAC, etc). While this workaround comes with a big caveat (using AirWatch for deployment) it will work. Since Apple neutered all Serial Number work arounds win iOS8 this is the most viable option I have found.
i am trying to implement an App with iCloud Key-value storage feature.
Currently, I'm testing it from two devices iPhone5s with iOS7.0.4 and iPhone4 with iOS6.1.1.
Do you guys have any idea why the same iCloud account (checked from Settings -> iCloud -> Account) gets two different ubiquityIdentityToken? i guess this is the reason the data didn't sync between this two devices (network accessed).
And on iOS6, NSUbiquitousKeyValueStoreDidChangeExternallyNotification is not trigging.
Thanks in advance!
The ubiquityIdentityToken is only intended to be used to:
Determine if iCloud is available to your app
Determine if the iCloud account has changed (by comparing to a previously saved value).
It's opaque but conforms to a few protocols. You can save it locally and compare the current value with a previous value, but that's about all it's good for. It's not guaranteed to be useful in any other situation.
It's not guaranteed to be the same on different devices, even if those devices use the same iCloud account. Why it might be different is not documented-- it might encode a device-specific value somehow. Regardless, it's not something that you can transfer from one device to another and expect to still be useful. That's not how it's designed to work.
It does encode a device-specific value in the token. The 8-digit hexadecimal number groups between positions 17 and 22 change on a different device OR with a different iCloud account.
The rest of the groups usually remain the same, across different apps, devices, OR iCloud accounts.
This is strange behaviour. In these cases Apple usually recommends signing out and logging again (using the same Apple ID) on both devices. Try that and see if it helps. Also, make sure to install the latest version of your app (with enabled iCloud) on every device.
I'm looking for a way to retrieve the UDID on devices running iOS 6+ (Enterprise deployment only - no app store limitations).
Calling the (now private) method uniqueIdentifier returns the 'vendorIdentifier' starting with 'FFFFFFF'. Unfortunately thats not what I want.
Any ideas? Is there another private method or something?
Thanks in advance.
I recommend you reading this article. To sum up:
The previously deprecated uniqueIdentifier now works like vendorIdentifier on iOS 7+, so it's no longer usable even for Enterprise Apps
OpenUDID cannot be shared between Applications on iOS 7+ and now can change. It's still usable but no longer recommended.
The vendorIdentifier hasn't changed, but it's not recommended for Enterprise Apps because it can change when updating the App.
The new advertisingIdentifier API is the way to go for new Apps. It's the same for all Apps and should not change frequently, but the user can reset it in the settings page.
Edit: Website udid.io obtains the real Device UDID instead of the obfuscated one if you need it for anything outside your App. If you need the UDID from within the App, see my answer above.
You can get a Unique UDID via this method using private api. Follow this link
Look for the code in accepted answer.
Sorry, but Apple warned it would be deprecated and it has been. I've had the same headache myself.
I can't help you identify the device in the same way Apple do, but you can always generate an unique UUID on app launch and stash that away in KeyChain. It won't be perfect, but it will persist between installations and will be unique to the device. As far as I know, that's the current solution