Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications, they're just "call center operators" running off a script.
Other folks are also noting that, because humans are sometimes bad at evaluating each others' intent, it is probably a good idea to attempt to make one's intent clear if going this route, lest you annoy the gatekeeper.
https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-bitcoin-app-apple-app-stor...
https://venturebeat.com/2014/12/14/bitcoin-wallet-coinbase-n...
This is what is wrong with walled gardens, laws should be made by lawmakers, not Apple.
I'll take it down a couple of notches to make it easier: HN could serve every user under the Sun and still be entitled to have a (perfectly legal) rule that says "Don't solicit upvotes". No amount of "oh but at their scale" will change that.
Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. or any company actually do not write laws (they lobby and bribe for them but that's a different can of worms). They just write their own rules for their own products and services. Those rules have to be within the law and even if common sense and current evidence may say they break the law, it's up to a judge in an antitrust lawsuit to decide.
As I tried to explain above, HN is free to have a rule which says "Don't solicit upvotes" but they can't have a rule "Don't talk to women". The simple answer is because no matter what that rule says, tit's not a law, it's just a rule which can be applied only until a judge decides it's against the law.
b) I don't know what qualifications you think an app reviewer needs. They are not looking through the code but simply playing with the app on a range of devices.
c) It is only a few hours for updates. Initial app submissions often take days/weeks and are very thorough.
The whole thing is a scam.
Which leads to the account being banned.
> and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the developer didn't write.
Which are detected through analysis if they are common spyware.
>The whole thing is a scam.
Clearly not.
>Which leads to the account being banned.
Only if it gets noticed.
>> and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the developer didn't write.
>Which are detected through analysis if they are common spyware.
Facebook got away with it for many years.
>>The whole thing is a scam.
>Clearly not.
If it weren't then they would let people choose to use the App Store. It only exists to protect Apple's services from competition.
True, but they are getting better at noticing.
>> and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the developer didn't write. >Which are detected through analysis if they are common spyware.
> Facebook got away with it for many years.
You know about that because they were stopped. And since then Apple has tightened the rules and stepped up detection.
>>The whole thing is a scam. >Clearly not. > If it weren't then they would let people choose to use the App Store.
No, because that would enable social engineering attacks once again.
> It only exists to protect Apple's services from competition.
This is straight up bullshit. You keep saying it, but it’s false at face value.
Millions of scams have been stopped.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-ove...
>You know about that because they were stopped. And since then Apple has tightened the rules and stepped up detection.
Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with other libraries still.
>No, because that would enable social engineering attacks once again.
People still get tricked into installing CA certs which is just as effective since everything has to be done in a browser due to the App Store restrictions. So no this hasn't prevented social engineering attacks, it's only changed them and it's come at an extreme cost.
False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts, unlike windows defender.
> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with other libraries still.
That doesn’t change anything.
>No, because that would enable social engineering attacks once again.
> People still get tricked into installing CA certs which is just as effective since everything has to be done in a browser due to the App Store restrictions.
> So no this hasn't prevented social engineering attacks,
A false statement. Many kinds of social engineering attacks have definitely been prevented.
> it's only changed them
Here you admit that significant classes of attack have been prevented.
Your argument is that because not all attacks have been prevented, there is no value in preventing attacks.
This is an obvious fallacy.
>Here you admit that significant classes of attack have been prevented.
I don't think people care whether they lost things on their phone because of malware or because of a fake CA cert, the attack works pretty much the same way and has the same result.
>False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts, unlike windows defender.
You don't need a dev account to distribute malware in dylibs.
>> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with other libraries still.
>That doesn’t change anything.
It means the App Store doesn't stop malware before it's able to exfiltrate data from large numbers of users for long periods of time. That's the justification for it.
Ok, but that’s not what you said before,
> (completely forfeiting ownership of personal computers by anyone that wants to participate in group chats with iphone users.)
This is false. There are many group chat programs, that people use cross platform and they are more popular than iMessage.
Nobody if ‘forfeiting ownership’ of anything anyway - that’s just an ideological tautology.
If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.
So literally no part of your statement is true.
>Here you admit that significant classes of attack have been prevented.
> I don't think people care whether they lost things on their phone because of malware or because of a fake CA cert, the attack works pretty much the same way and has the same result.
They may not know or care about the technical details but they do care about the risk level, so this is a moot point.
>False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts, unlike windows defender.
> You don't need a dev account to distribute malware in dylibs.
No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.
>> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with other libraries still. >That doesn’t change anything.
> It means the App Store doesn't stop malware before it's able to exfiltrate data from large numbers of users for long periods of time. That's the justification for it.
False. It just means that some apps slip through the protections. It doesn’t say a thing about the ones which are stopped.
This is a repeat of the earlier fallacy: “if the protection doesn’t stop all attacks then we don’t need the protection”, which is obviously not true.
>Ok, but that’s not what you said before,
It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote in my first post.
>If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.
Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I can put it in my pocket. If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone. Apple knows this and that's why there's no web interface for iMessage.
>No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.
Someone does, but it does not need to be the dylib author.
> just means that some apps slip through the protections.
This wasn't some, it was happening (and likely still is) on a massive scale and affected most popular apps.
>This is a repeat of your earlier fallacy: “if the protection doesn’t stop all attacks then we don’t need the protection”, which is obviously not true.
Forcing the "protection" on everyone, despite the extreme cost, is wrong. Especially since the "protection" does very little to stop this kind of attack in practice. Not a fallacy, it's not worth the cost IE a scam.
This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.
All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.
There is no extreme cost.
You say the protection does very little - but that ignores the numbers: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-ove...
Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.
> If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.
No you don't need a windows machine for this, just something that can run signal.
>All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.
They do because anyone participating in a real time iMessage group is forced to put up with whatever software policy Apple dictates on their phone.
>There is no extreme cost.
The cost is that you have to hand your ssh keys over to closed source apps to use ssh, you can't use decent chat applications because the app author has to have a full-time ops team (distinct from the team managing the chat server even though they already have the resources) managing the F**ing notification server because those are Apple's policies. You can't run most desktop apps because of licensing restrictions. There's almost no community maintained software so almost everything on the phone either costs a ton or harvests every last bit of data it can find (which is typically beyond what Apple supposedly allows) and anything remotely useful is unprofitable to maintain.
Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.
> They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.
They pulled it out of their data.
> Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone.
Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross platform apps you can use to do group chat.
> Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.
So what? There are many options. Nobody has to use it.
> Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.
Not for most consumers.
If you are someone who insists on inspecting the source code of SSH apps, I applaud you.
You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
That’s why they buy a consumer product which doesn’t require them to.
I agree. This is why Apple is offering ‘login with Apple’. It’s safer than entering credentials.
> this happens all the time.
No it doesn’t. There are a few rare cases, but many more are stopped by review.
> Having some contractor spend a few hours poking at the GUI doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be responsible.
No, but almost nobody is dealing with SSH keys, and those who are should know how to deal with them.
These are consumer devices - if you need a device you can inspect the source for, these are not for you, but clearly almost nobody can do that.
>You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
"Experts" inspecting the source code for apps allowed for some bare minimum security checks. Companies buy out smaller software projects and add spyware to them fairly often (on the iPhone this usually happens via dylibs rather than the App publisher purposefully doing it.) and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this without an adequate replacement. The effect is much worse overall security.
Yes.
and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this without an adequate replacement.
No - these can be scanned for during app review.
> The effect is much worse overall security.
No, consumer software outside the App Store is rarely examined by experts who have access to the source code.
This certainty is not a general practice.
The Debian repos are not a software store.
>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020
They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.
>Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features
A lot of those are probably development tools that users legitimately wanted.
>Other rejected apps
Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed. I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.
>credit card numbers are never shared with merchant.
The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but that does little to help the end user.
You do realize they have the data, right?
>Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features A lot of those are probably development tools that users legitimately wanted.
You never justify or source this, you literally just … … I think you know how this goes.
>Other rejected apps > Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed.
No, people trust the App Store more than they trust the web. That’s the whole point.
> I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.
The situation where consumers are happy to pay for software because someone is weeding out scams?
>credit card numbers are never shared with merchant. The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but that does little to help the end user.
I guess you’ve never had a card stolen or been the victim of fraud. Eventually you can get your money back in most cases, but it can take a long time and be a huge hassle.
Again you argue against beneficial protections for no apparent reason.
Small developers don't get same access as big developers and their apps get klled for smallest reason just by having some obscure policy or change in policy.
Developers don't have same access as Apple google eg: Screen Time
Hence, security theater.
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.packagingG....
[Edit] I should add that an annual listing is $150 and the initial security review is $2550, so no free cheese either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190
A scam is when you've been deceived or defrauded.
If you consent to pay $10 a week for an app that doesn't provide what it claims to, that's one thing, and that should be actionable. But if it does what it claims to, not liking the price does not equate to being a scam.
At best you get to take your marbles and refuse to play entirely; which isn't exactly a reasonable long term strategy.
There should be competition between app stores.
There was a news here where malware was found on the Apple iOS store, and Apple changed their mind in the last moment and refused to inform the victims.
The reality show you (if you want to see) that
- malware happens (you can't make automatic analysis code to detect all possible issues )
- Apple users will mostly have a wrong image of the Store security due to Apple not informing victims when bad things happen and a big PR budget to paint a fiction.
The reviewers are there mostly to make sure you do not put a link to your website and buypass the Apple payments and make sure that the app does not crash and use the approved UX. I really hope you are not that navie to think they are opening the app in a debugger and checking for weird code.
As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented) APIs are used, I don’t know how effective they are at catching malware, though.
This was done on Windows too, you were not forced but any business would sign their application, otherwise they user would get a scary warning that the developer is not know.
>As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented) APIs are used, I don’t know how effective they are at catching malware, though.
The sandbox should solve this, unless the Store bans APIs only for some or worse there are hidden APIs that should not be used and the sandbox is to dumb to notice you are using them , then this would be security by obscurity.
This topic is different then most of the other topics about side loading apps, in this case the giant refused to allow an application on the store, or allow access to an API without a good enough reason. This reveals again that rules are not fair and is very hard to get justice for the users.
I would suggest a law to force the giants to give always an exact reason of why an action aganst someone happened, I have personal experience where an account of mine was banned and I have no way to appeal and I have no idea what was wrong. The giants are shitting on us all, as long as the numbers of the victims are low enough some flashy ads would solve their PR problems. We need something to make it fair for the users, make it easy to get our justice.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
This regulation specifically looks at platform-to-business relationships, and requires actual disclosure of reasons, notice periods, etc.
What we need to see are cases using this law (as it's pretty clear from article 4 what business' rights are), so it becomes too costly to trample over businesses in an unaccountable way. Once the cost of human intervention and support is lower than that of their legal bills and penalties, human support and intervention will return. Platforms are getting away without humans in the loop as a result of the lack of cost impact to them of a mistake. Once it hits their bottom line and gets their counsel in a pickle, it will start to change rapidly to preserve their bank balance.
Compared to Windows as a case study of what happens when you let users install anything they want from untrusted sources, it seems that the app stores do fairly well at culling obvious malware. At least that's what I experienced comparing the number of time I had to cleanup a friend or family member's computer filled with malware and browser toolbars vs. iphones and androids.
What you don't see, is all the apps that steal the user's data.
Curation obviously helps but it's difficult to measure to what extent.
On the other hand, you can't be completely sure that sandboxes on mobile devices don't have actively exploited security issues as there are many ways to bypass app review from discovering the true functionality of an app.
Anything widely known gets fixed quickly. There are plenty of holes in browser sandboxing. The number approximately doubles as soon as you look at anything !Chrome, too.
To exploit those you need to get past app review in the first place, though, and the type of code that can do stuff like this for the most part sticks out like a sore thumb when subjected to static analysis.
Most of Apple's checks around this stuff are automated, I understand, and are applied to every submission instantly.
Basically, for certain classes of apps, macOS is now already taking the iOS "App Store or gtfo" model.
True
> What you don't see, is all the apps that steal the user's data.
Exactly this. Apple now has policies against fingerprinting etc. which can’t be prevented by sandboxing.
> Curation obviously helps but it's difficult to measure to what extent.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-ove...
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/07/app-store-35-percent-of...
Compare that to Google Play
The last article explicitly mentions that most of the malware needs iPhone to be jailbroken or the app to be installed outside of the App Store, which kind of proves my point.
The research by Panda Security also showed that the ratio of malware on Android compared to iPhone is 50 to 1.
https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/mobile-security...
Drivers licenses aren't only about competence. Sure, there's a test. But, there's also the ability to revoke a license.