Can I get the information about which apps are on foreground, so that controlling the screen and get interaction from user.
I can do it on Android and I want to do it also in iOS.
This is for making an app that monitoring the usages of apps, not for the CPU usage.
Please tell me how could I manage this ?
On jailbroken devices, a quite straighforward solution is to use Ryan Petrich's AppList library.
I'm not sure if this is easy on a stock device, but you might get somewhere using the Mach/XNU API for retrieving process info and searching for a suspected app executable path/name.
Related
Pretty much what the title says.
I would like to install a 3rd party app on my iOS 11 device, but the only way to do so is by self-signing the .ipa and installing it via Cydia Impactor.
What are the possible security concerns in doing so?
How much control and access would said app have over my device once trusted?
There's no way of saying for certain.
Private APIs
iOS 11 fixed a number of vulnerabilities that allowed access to personal info such as SMS messages without user knowing. There might be other vulnerabilities but it looks like iOS 11 is pretty good in regards to private API access. Pretty much every known personal info leak was fixed.
The problem here is you can't do anything about it. Only way is to disassemble the application and see for yourself.
Permissions
Of course, there're many ways third-party app can steal your personal info if you give it the access. For example, contacts, calendar, call history (without phone number but still), microphone, photo library - once given permission to access, can be accessed at any point even when running in the background without you knowing it. Application can run in the background indefinitely, it's still not fixed by Apple.
Accessing location will always display an icon in the status bar so that's fine. But there're ways you can fool iOS to access location once and not display the icon. It's not reliable but it works.
If application is running in the foreground then it can access camera, microphone, location and iOS will not tell you anything about it. Recently there was an article about camera specifically. You can't tell when it's recording and that's a real problem.
Solution here is simple - don't give the permission.
Jailbreak
Jailbreaking relies on a number of vulnerabilities to modify kernel to disable security measures. No one is stopping you from using these exploits to be executed from a third-party app not meant for jailbreaking. In fact, all recent jailbreaks are done by installing an application using Cydia Impactor. And there's an actual example of that - Filza. It's a file manager that can access root file system. It does that by executing exploits used in jailbreak.
Solution here is to make sure your iOS is up to date and has no jailbreak for it. Of course there's a possibility of unknown exploits. Serious vulnerabilities found regularly in iOS. You can disassemble the application to see what it's actually doing but I don't think you would asking this question if you knew how do that.
I'm trying to log users individual app usage on iOS9.
I'd rather prefer that it wouldn't use jailbreak limited solutions, self explanatory. Doing the variation of this app on a jailbroken phone shouldn't be hard.
This will certainly not be released on the App Store as Apple wouldn't allow it.
I'm looking for any private API that can do this, any hidden iOS API's that can be used to do this. ANYTHING.
What I've already looked through:
how to determine which apps are background and which app is foreground on iOS by application id
How to know about app launched and details jailbreak iOS 7
Is there a private API to be able to detect what is current foreground app on iOS?
How to monitoring App running in the foreground in iOS8？use the PrivateFrameworks SpringBoardServices
which proved to be relatively helpful - we now can assume that there is some sort of additional access requirement, probably an entitlement, but we don't really know how it should look like
Can you find individual app usage duration using SpringBoard services framework or other private framework?
Find out active application or if on Springboard
Programmatically detect which iOS application is visible to user
However all of these proved to be unhelpful because Apple fixed this security flaw with iOS8 and the method to copy/access the currently front most app bundle identifier no longer works.
Question is: Is there someone who knows a workaround using different tools/exploits that do not require jailbreak?
Ideas:
inspecting the processes running on the device and devising an algorithm that would be able to recognize spikes that mean an app has been launched, which potentially could work, but it probably would be a major pain in the ass. Questions mentioning this solution:
Detect which app is currently running on iOS using sysctl,
Return a list of running background apps/processes in iOS
How to get Names of Background Running Apps
Find Background running apps in iphone
inspecting the phones traffic somehow?
not sure if there is some kernel stuff that I could do
Here is my Reddit version of this question if anyone wants to check it out. Also if it's of any value, here are the runtime headers for iOS9 and list of Apple's private API's.
Unfortunately, I was looking for a similar solution and have come to the conclusion that, at least at this point in time, there are no known methods that will allow you to determine app usage on iOS. Even the MDM providers such as Good, Airwatch, MobileIron, etc. don't seem to be able to do this. If anyone is able to come up with a solution, I'd love to see it.
For now, however, I think we would have seen a solution if someone had one that worked on the latest iOS.
sysctl is still open but they block certain combinations of selectors. I did this on iOS 7 and gave Apple Product Security the code. They won't patch iOS 7 but rely on App Review. iPhone 4 is wide open.
Anyone know if there is anything you have to do as a developer of an app to get your app to be suggested form the lock screen in iOS 8 (I'm talking about when the app isn't installed, so it takes you to the app store)? The only information I've been able to find about this is speculative at best -- most seem to conclude that this is either based off of the "apps near me" that the app store has, or direct arrangements made with Apple. Anyone know for sure?
This can be achieved using Passbook
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/PassKit_PG/Chapters/Creating.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012195-CH4-SW53
I want to write an iOS sample application which can launch itself whenever device is rebooted. Please share your thoughts and any pointers will be really helpful.
Setting VOIP in background modes seems to be one option.
I am NOT looking for a Jail break solution.
There is a way if you have access to MDM tools or the Apple Configurator, and are able to control the device and its' profile. For example, if you are the curator at a museum or you or a teacher and hand out iPads to students, you'll most certainly have this level of control; and since you're writing a sample application, I suppose this level of control is possible as well.
There is a feature known as Single App Mode (see page 17) that locks a device into a single app. According to the documentation, if the device is powered down, the specified app will launch at boot. (I don't have the setup to confirm this.)
Note that Single App Mode is not the same as guided access mode, though people do tend to get them confused.
So should you have access to the right tools your original intent may be possible.
There is really not much you can do to achieve such functionality. The most you can do is to provide background fetching to prepare your app for when user launches it explicitly.
I have never seen a single app that could launch itself for no reason.
Hope this can be useful.
Can't be done unless the device is jailbroken, and I can't help you with that.
To my knowledge, this is not possible. Your app does not have access to this level of system information.
What you could do is periodically send push-notifications with a payload that temporary allows you to access app functionality.
This is a strange one, I have a need to create an iOS app that runs in the background on an iOS device, but can not be visible on the Home screen of the device. The app may need to show up in Settings to configure a few options, but it mostly needs to run behind the scenes.
I do not need to publish this app on the app store, it is strictly an enterprise app for my company.
Does anyone know how this kind of behavior might be achieved? Configuration profiles? API's? etc?
Edit: Jailbreaking the device is not really an option for us. We have to keep the devices as they are.
Backgrounding
There are several methods to get permanent background execution:
a) Silent audio which is mentioned by JRG-Developer
b) Usage of beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler + turning location manager on/off (it will reset remaining time to 600 seconds)
Making app invisible
You can use SBAppTags in Info.plist (take a look at this: How to remove app icon programatically from jail broken iPhone app?)
It will make your icon not visible on Home screen.
I've no idea how you can tackle the not be visible on the home screen criteria, but there are certain services that are allowed to be run in the background continuously, notably:
Background Audio (even silent audio)
While this is indeed very hacky, short of jailbreaking the devices, this may be your best bet.
While it's unlikely / very difficult to get past the review process, in the event for some reason you do need to (attempt) to publish this app to the App Store, some apps are even available on the App Store which take advantage of this hack, such as PasteBot.
You should definitely read their write-up here about getting their app's Cut-and-Paste functionality to work while in the background:
http://tapbots.com/blog/pastebot/pastebot-music-in-background
Another out-of-the-box idea, why not use Android devices instead, which do support multitasking?
Two methods:
Jailbreak. A jailbroken iPhone is essentially a Mac and you can use all Mac UNIX programming tricks - spawn a daemon (you can even ask launchd to do that), or something. You can set up enteprise-wise Cydia source. Refer to saurik's website for a walkthrough and set up an experimental server using Ubuntu (which used apt too)
A non-jailbreak way may be possible, but it will depend on what your app is doing. You can try use enterprise-wise push notifications.
Given that this is impossible to do on non jailbroken phones, I'd suggest the following:
develop a directory app, or a phone list app, something that is specific to your company.
have it connect to a web service once a day to register the device ID (so you know the user has not deleted the app)
tell users they need to keep the app open at all times (and if a user's device does not register one day, send them an email asking them to launch the app).
Now you can send back whatever you want with the app. If they kill it, you'll know the next day when you have a script look at the logs.
If you think this is a terrible idea, it is, but its the best you are going to get on iOS right now.
EDIT: you could send a notification every day - say in the AM - to make sure the user opened the app if it wasn't running.
From my experince, this kind of behaviour cannot be achieved on iOS. When an app enters into background, it is active only for a small particular amount of time. After that, it goes into hybernate state. It stops working. So the behaviour you said can not be achieved without abusing iOS workflow. Thats why some call iOS's multitasking as not true multitasking. Only jailbreaking might help your case. That was for one case. The second one where the app cannot be seen on home screen is again, impossible. It has to be on springboard to run.