Edit: Also my larger point was the iOS security is not fundamentally better than anything else. The closed nature, restrictive policies etc. help but fundamentally it's nothing outstanding. It was a response to tptacek claiming opposite.
You asserted that iOS is "unfixable" because the ObjC runtime cannot prevent apps from using "private/internal calls that your app is not supposed to use," whereas "Android gets code access control for free with Java."
But as I showed, Java access controls are easily bypassed, so they do not provide any security. This is by design: security is enforced at the process boundary, not by the runtime.
My hope is that you now appreciate that neither the ObjC nor Android Java runtimes are a security risk, because they are not responsible for enforcing any security policy.
> Also my larger point was the iOS security is not fundamentally better than anything else
iOS security is fundamentally better. You can read the whitepaper to understand the ways: data protection classes, the Secure Enclave, and lots more.
But here's a damning fact: iOS encrypts your data by default, Android does not. That by itself makes iOS fundamentally more secure.
What you are not understanding or ignoring is that iOS apps (over 250) that were App Store approved were able to retrieve personal user data including email addresses by reverse engineering the names of the private APIs and using message passing. Android sure has private APIs and you can access those but you're still restricted to the permissions you asked for. For example you need to declare android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS permission to get the user's primary email. Not on iOS apparently where they rely on manual review to ensure you are not calling the Private API - which fails as can be seen in the Chinese AD SDK fiasco I posted.
So no Android runtime isn't a security risk as much as iOS private APIs are - your app gets a broad set of permissions on iOS by default and you can do clever trickery to call private APIs to collect personal info and who knows what else without the user knowing. Android needs your app to ask for that permission first (and at runtime on M)- you aren't calling a private method on Android without declaring the necessary permission to get what you want without user interaction.
I have read it. It describes an attack on the app review process, i.e. a trojan. Their apps require the user to grant privileges. For example, their GreetingCard app requests access to the user's address book, and the user has to grant it.
> iOS apps (over 250) that were App Store approved were able to retrieve personal user data including email addresses
This is not true. Here's the blog: https://sourcedna.com/blog/20151018/ios-apps-using-private-a...
The data they collected was list of installed apps, serial numbers, and some sort of AppleID numeric identifier. In particular, they did not (could not) collect email addresses.
It's bad that the SDK was collecting this stuff, but this data is fairly innocuous. Last I checked, Android provides information like the list of installed apps and various serial numbers without requiring elevated permission.
If you think it's possible to get the user's email address through an iOS private API, I challenge you to tell me what that private API is.
> For example you need to declare android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS permission to get the user's primary email. Not on iOS apparently
This is wrong. On iOS, the only way to access the user's email is through the Address Book framework, which prompts the user at the time of access.
> your app gets a broad set of permissions on iOS by default
This is completely false. iOS has a comprehensive on-demand permissions model, which is widely recognized as better than the install-time permission model on Android. This is why Android is switching to iOS style on-demand permissions in Marshmallow.
> you aren't calling a private method on Android without declaring the necessary permission
Please stop confusing private methods with elevated permissions. You CAN call private methods without elevated permissions, as my code above demonstrates.
[Edited for unnecessary stuff]
Oh the article you linked has Apple response that is quoted verbatim below - it references user email addresses. Specifically.
“We’ve identified a group of apps that are using a third-party advertising SDK, developed by Youmi, a mobile advertising provider, that uses private APIs to gather private information, such as user email addresses.."
> Please stop confusing private methods with elevated permissions. You CAN call private methods without elevated permissions, as my code above demonstrates.
What I wrote was you are not going to be able to call an Android API via private invocation and succeed if the API requires a specific permission and your app hasn't declared it.
All of this only goes to prove that Apple's security in iOS is not extraordinary as you claim - it is fallible like every other platform except with the exception of fingerprints which are currently believed to be secure - but that's now the case with Android as well - in M they are using ARM Trust Zone with no app access.
> What I wrote was you are not going to be able to call an Android API via private invocation and succeed if the API requires a specific permission and your app hasn't declared it
Just like on iOS, with the difference that it happens at call time and not installation time.
> All of this only goes to prove that Apple's security in iOS is not extraordinary as you claim
It shows the exact opposite! Notice how ridiculously weak these results are. On one of the most high-profile targets today, an app may (unconfirmed) be able to determine the user's email address and send it to a server. On a trojan app that the user deliberately installed, and then deliberately granted access to Twitter, it can post a tweet without the user's confirmation, if the user has not updated the OS. Fetch the smelling salts!
Meanwhile, millions of Android phones are part of botnets, like NotCompatible.C, at one point reaching 1.5% of mobile devices in the USA. A Chrome 0-day came out last week, allowing full control remotely of fully-patched Android phones. These aren't research papers showing theoretical attacks, this is real life.
Yes, iOS has extraordinary security, and its competition only makes it look better.
/jeez why do I bother with Apple fanboys?
Here's a sample of how to invoke `Activity.savedDialogKeyFor`, which is private:
Worked perfectly on Android Marshmallow emulator. As I said, it's trivial.> Also - I'll leave this here
What's your point? There was no security exploit here, and no security policy can realistically prevent networked apps from sharing data like your email address. That falls to the review process.
What's remarkable here is how little data this malware was actually able to capture. Certainly less than on Android, where users routinely grant excessive permissions, like giving Netflix access to your phone.