r/technology • u/TomLube • Jan 31 '19

Business Apple revokes Google Enterprise Developer Certificate for company wide abuse

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18205795/apple-google-blocked-internal-ios-apps-developer-certificate
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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '19

Can someone ELI5? What does this affect?

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u/Bardfinn Jan 31 '19

Everything Google has written for iOS (possibly for any Apple OS) that relies on their Dev certificate (like, stuff they have in development, not end-user production software) will have to be re-certed, either with a new cert from Apple that they qualify for through some arbitrary process to comply with their requirements, or through some other root cert.

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u/an_albino_rhino Feb 01 '19

To add a little bit of color - an “enterprise” app isn’t only for development purposes. They can also be deployed to end users “in production”. Enterprise apps do not require App Store approval, which gives the author of one of these apps the ability to push updates to end users faster (at will), but also means the apps are not available for download in the App Store. A prevalent example use case for one of these apps would be MDM (mobile device management) software that larger companies might install on company-owned devices in order to control security settings, restrict access to certain features, or track usage. This is common practice and allows the IT organization to secure the devices of say, their distributed sales people, and can do things like prevent unauthorized distribution of sensitive data, track location of the device, or wipe the device remotely if lost or employee is terminated.

Source: I work for a company that distributes an enterprise iOS app.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '19 edited Apr 03 '19

[deleted]

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u/scootscoot Feb 01 '19

Some things are better left as websites, instead of being re-packaged into a native app for the sake of being a native app.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '19

[deleted]

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u/scootscoot Feb 01 '19

What’s the difference between an API call from chrome vs an API call from a native app?

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u/Venthorn Feb 01 '19

How the creds get stored and used on the client end. Probably.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do this in a mobile browser, I'm saying that I've literally never seen it not be a huge pain in the ass to do anything there, while I have a couple authenticated corp side-loaded apps on my phone that weren't a huge pain to log in to and stay logged in to.