Richard Taylor

With the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the EU, Apple is opening the possibility of installing apps from alternative apps stores. As discussed in Update on apps distributed in the European Union the intention is that all apps that can be installed must go through a notarization process, which signs the app package with a certificate from Apple. This will be a lighter (and fully automated) review process than will be applied to apps for the official Apple Store. Read Full Story

One of the key, if sometimes overlooked, features of Approov is its integrated support for dynamic certificate pinning. In this blog we explain how it works and its numerous advantages. Read Full Story

In this blog we introduce our new mobile certificate pinning configuration tool. This free web tool allows you to automatically generate the configuration required to pin your mobile app connections, providing an additional layer of security. Read Full Story

Photo credit: iStock.com/Evkaz We are all very aware of the issues around phishing of user credentials. But it is not only users that can be phished, apps can be too. In previous blogs we’ve shown you how you can make a MITM attack against an app. In this blog we’ll demonstrate that a MITM attack against an app is analogous to a phishing attack against a human. Moreover, there are some similar characteristics to the protections required. Read Full Story

Even if you only have a vague interest in app security I’m sure the recent furore around Clubhouse hasn’t escaped your attention. There is significant buzz around this invite-only iOS app. Enabling live audio chat rooms between participants, it sets the expectation that these interactions are somewhat private and certainly not recorded. With big celebrity names such as Elon Musk, Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey as users there is a significant demand for a coveted invite. Read Full Story

As we discussed in our previous blog, there is a strong argument to be made that Bluetooth Contact tracing is too Blue Sky. The technology has been overhyped, over promised and, in the UK at least , the delivery so bungled that public confidence has been completely undermined. In the meantime we are stepping back to manual contact tracing efforts, with privacy characteristics that don’t come anywhere close to the lofty aspirations of decentralised contact tracing apps. Read Full Story

Contact tracing has been in the news a lot in recent months. No wonder. It’s widely seen as playing a key role in opening our societies up again after lockdown, and an important part of the strategy for countries that have already done well in suppressing transmissions. As technologists we, and many like us, immediately jumped onto the possibilities of Bluetooth. A ready made technology available on just about every smartphone designed for ubiquitous short range radio communication. Perfect. We just need to throw an app together and we can map all the contacts people are having day to day, so if anyone gets sick we can automatically alert anyone else that might have been exposed. Cool. Should be ready in a couple of weeks, right? Read Full Story

Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash Our aim is to make the process of integrating Approov into your mobile app as simple as possible. Our Quickstart guides show you how to add Approov into your app, tailored to whatever framework or programming style you’ve already adopted. In this blog we are going to cover the options we have for iOS Native app development. Read Full Story

We’ve been thinking a lot about contact tracing apps in recent weeks. There are ongoing debates about whether a centralised or decentralised model is superior, and how the ensuing discussions around privacy will impact their takeup. Read Full Story

When the NHSX contact tracing app was made available in the app stores last Thursday we decided to take a quick look at its operation and how the code has been put together. We used the Android version and the excellent MobSF tools to do our reversing analysis. On Friday the full source code of the app was also published on github. Read Full Story