I am currently working on Fraud System Detection that will be used by one of the financial institutions. Those tools are related to ensuring user security. Our goal is to identify features that can trigger an early warning system for attempted fraud. We have identified three uncertain variables: Whether the user is having a conversation while using our app, Whether the user has specific screen sharing apps on their phone, Whether the user has enabled VPN connection. Here my doubts appear: Can we check the presence of a telephone conversation if we are not a VOIP application? Can we check the presence of installed programs using Universal Link and canOpenUrl(_:) method? Can we read "SCOPED" key from CFNetworkCopySystemProxySettings() dictionary? I will be glad for any advice and help.

WebAuthn Level 3 § 6.3.2 Step 2 states the authenticator must : Check if at least one of the specified combinations of PublicKeyCredentialType and cryptographic parameters in credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs is supported. If not, return an error code equivalent to "NotSupportedError" and terminate the operation. On my iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.5, Safari + Passwords does not exhibit this behavior; instead an error is not reported and an ES256 credential is created when an RP passes a non-empty sequence that does not contain {"type":"public-key","alg":-7} (e.g., [{"type":"public-key","alg":-8}]). When I use Chromium 138.0.7204.92 on my laptop running Arch Linux in conjunction with the Passwords app (connected via the "hybrid" protocol), a credential is not created and instead an error is reported per the spec.

In a project I was using Local Authentication to authenticate a user. When I got a request to support smartcard/PIV token authentication (which Local Authentication does not support), I had to switch to Authorization Services, which works pretty. There's only one issue I have. Local Authentication's evaluatePolicy:localizedReason:reply: requires a reason in the form "<appname>" is trying to <localized reason>. The app is currently translated into 41 languages and I would like to use the localized strings for the AuthorizationEnvironment of Authorization Services as well. The problem is that Local Authentication prefixes the localized string with something like "<appname>" is trying to and Authorization Services does not do this. Is there a way to get this prefix from somewhere so I can manually add it to the (partially) localized string? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thank you, Marc

I want to use incrementalUpdates for my app but store always returns false on my iPad with OS18.3.2. I want to know what are th conditions in which store says its unable to perform incrementalUpdates?

Hi. We are trying to get the access token before calling any API. The app can go in bad network areas but the token acquisition keeps happening for the network call. The devices are managed devices which means it has some policies installed. We are using MSAL lib for the authentication and we are investigating from that angle too but the below error seems to be coming from apple authentication which needs our attention. ========================================== LaunchServices: store (null) or url (null) was nil: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-54 "process may not map database" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=process may not map database, _LSLine=68, _LSFunction=_LSServer_GetServerStoreForConnectionWithCompletionHandler} Attempt to map database failed: permission was denied. This attempt will not be retried. Failed to initialize client context with error Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-54 "process may not map database" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=process may not map database, _LSLine=68, _LSFunction=_LSServer_GetServerStoreForConnectionWithCompletionHandler} Failed to get application extension record: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-54 "(null)" ASAuthorizationController credential request failed with error: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError Code=1003 "(null)" ========================================== This happens mostly when we switches the network or keep the device in no or low network area. This comes sometimes when app goes in background too. Just trying to give as much as information I could. Any lead would be highly appreciated. Thank you

In iOS 18, i use CNContactPickerViewController to access to Contacts (i know it is one-time access). After first pick up one contact, the Setting > Apps > my app > Contacts shows Private Access without any option to close it. Is there any way to close it and undisplay it ? I tried to uninstall and reinstall my app, but it didn't work.

We are using SecItemCopyMatching from LocalAuthentication to access the private key to sign a challenge in our native iOS app twice in a few seconds from user interactions. This was working as expected up until about a week ago where we started getting reports of it hanging on the biometrics screen (see screenshot below). From our investigation we've found the following: It impacts newer iPhones using iOS 26.1 and later. We have replicated on these devices: iPhone 17 Pro max iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 15 Pro max iPhone 15 Only reproducible if the app tries to access the private key twice in quick succession after granting access to face ID. Looks like a race condition between the biometrics permission prompt and Keychain private key access We were able to make it work by waiting 10 seconds between private key actions, but this is terrible UX. We tried adding adding retries over the span of 10 seconds which fixed it on some devices, but not all. We checked the release notes for iOS 26.1, but there is nothing related to this. Screenshot:

Hello, We received a rejection on one of our IOS applications because we were doing Microsoft MSAL login through the user's browser. The representative recommended that we use Webview to do in-app logins. However when we tried to handle the custom app uri redirection (looking like myapp://auth/), Webview does not seem to send the user back to the application. Does anyone have a fix for this? Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m working on adapting our app to iOS 26’s new passkey feature, specifically Automatic Passkey Upgrades. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/279/ Our app already supports passkey registration and authentication, which have been running reliably in production. We’d like to extend passkey coverage to more users. According to the WWDC session, adding the parameter requestStyle: .conditional to createCredentialRegistrationRequest should allow the system to seamlessly upgrade an account with a passkey. However, in my testing, I consistently receive the following error: Error | Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError Code=1001 "(null)" Test environment: Xcode 26.0 beta 4 (17A5285i) iPhone 11 running iOS 26.0 (23A5297n) Questions: Is the Automatic Passkey Upgrades feature currently available in iOS 26? I understand that the system may perform internal checks and not all upgrade attempts will succeed. However, during development, is there a way to obtain more diagnostic information? At the moment, it’s unclear whether the failure is due to internal validation or an issue with my code or environment. Thanks.

Hello, Is there any way to detect if the iOS screen is currently being shared via FaceTime or iPhone Mirroring? Our application relies on this information to help ensure that users are not accessing it from one location while physically being in another.

Hi everyone, I'm developing an iOS app using the AppsFlyer SDK. I understand that starting with iOS 14.5, if a user denies the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) permission, we are not allowed to access the IDFA or perform cross-app tracking. However, I’d like to clarify which in-app events are still legally and technically safe to send when the user denies ATT permission. Specifically, I want to know: Is it acceptable to send events like onboarding_completed, paywall_viewed, subscription_started, subscribe, subscribe_price, or app_opened if they are not linked to IDFA or any form of user tracking? Would sending such internal behavioral events (used purely for SKAdNetwork performance tracking or in-app analytics) violate Apple’s privacy policy if no device identifiers are attached? Additionally, if these events are sent in fully anonymous form (i.e., not associated with IDFA, user ID, email, or any identifiable metadata), does Apple still consider this a privacy concern? In other words, can onboarding_completed, paywall_viewed, subsribe, subscribe_price, etc., be sent in anonymous format without violating ATT policies? Are there any official Apple guidelines or best practices that outline what types of events are considered compliant in the absence of ATT consent? My goal is to remain 100% compliant with Apple’s policies while still analyzing meaningful user behavior to improve the in-app experience. Any clarification or pointers to documentation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hi, we were recently approved for the com.apple.developer.web-browser.public-key-credential entitlement and have added it to our app. It initially worked as expected for a couple of days, but then it stopped working. We're now seeing the same error as before adding the entitlement: Told not to present authorization sheet: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServicesCore.AuthorizationError Code=1 "(null)" ASAuthorizationController credential request failed with error: Error Domain=com.apple.AuthenticationServices.AuthorizationError Code=1004 "(null)" Do you have any insights into what might be causing this issue? Thank you!

I have been trying to find a way to be able to sign some data with private key of an identity in login keychain without raising any prompts. I am able to do this with system keychain (obviously with correct permissions and checks) but not with login keychain. It always ends up asking user for their login password. Here is how the code looks, roughly, NSDictionary *query = @{ (__bridge id)kSecClass: (__bridge id)kSecClassIdentity, (__bridge id)kSecReturnRef: @YES, (__bridge id)kSecMatchLimit: (__bridge id)kSecMatchLimitAll }; CFTypeRef result = NULL; OSStatus status = SecItemCopyMatching((__bridge CFDictionaryRef)query, (CFTypeRef *)&result); NSArray *identities = ( NSArray *)result; SecIdentityRef identity = NULL; for (id _ident in identities) { // pick one as required } SecKeyRef privateKey = NULL; OSStatus status = SecIdentityCopyPrivateKey(identity, &privateKey); NSData *strData = [string dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; unsigned char hash[CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH]; CC_SHA256(strData.bytes, (CC_LONG)strData.length, hash); NSData *digestData = [NSData dataWithBytes:hash length:CC_SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH]; CFErrorRef cfError = NULL; NSData *signature = (__bridge_transfer NSData *)SecKeyCreateSignature(privateKey, kSecKeyAlgorithmRSASignatureDigestPKCS1v15SHA256, (__bridge CFDataRef)digestData, &cfError); Above code raises these system logs in console default 08:44:52.781024+0000 securityd client is valid, proceeding default 08:44:52.781172+0000 securityd code requirement check failed (-67050), client is not Apple-signed default 08:44:52.781233+0000 securityd displaying keychain prompt for /Applications/Demo.app(81692) If the key is in login keychain, is there any way to do SecKeyCreateSignature without raising prompts? What does client is not Apple-signed mean? PS: Identities are pre-installed either manually or via some device management solution, the application is not installing them.

I have a sandboxed Mac app which I can grant access to a folder using an NSOpenPanel. Once it’s been granted access it can enumerate the contents of the folder just fine. If I rename the folder while the app is open and then make the app enumerate the folder’s contents again, though, it seems to have lost access. What’s the recommended way to have an app’s sandbox “track” files as they’re moved around the filesystem? (NSDocument handles this for you, from what I can tell.) I’ve managed to hack something together with a combination of Dispatch sources and security-scoped bookmarks, but it feels like there must be an easier solution …

Hi everyone, I’m working an Objective-C lib that performs Keychain operations, such as generating cryptographic keys and signing data. The lib will be used by my team in a Java program for macOS via JNI. When working with the traditional file-based Keychain (i.e., without access control flags), everything works smoothly, no issues at all. However, as soon as I try to generate a key using access control flags SecAccessControlCreateWithFlags, the Data Protection Keychain returns error -34018 (errSecMissingEntitlement) during SecKeyCreateRandomKey. This behavior is expected. To address this, I attempted to codesign my native dynamic library (.dylib) with an entitlement plist specifying various combinations of: keychain-access-groups com.apple.security.keychain etc. with: My Apple Development certificate Developer ID Application certificate Apple Distribution certificate None of these combinations made a difference, the error persists. I’d love to clarify: Is it supported to access Data Protection Keychain / Secure Enclave Keys in this type of use case? If so, what exact entitlements does macOS expect when calling SecKeyCreateRandomKey from a native library? I’d really appreciate any guidance or clarification. Thanks in advance! Best regards, Neil

Hi all, I’m building a macOS-native C++ trading bot, compiled via Xcode. It sends REST API requests to a crypto exchange (Bitvavo) that require HMAC-SHA256 signatures using a pre-sign string (timestamp + method + path + body) and an API secret. Here’s the issue: • The exact same pre-sign string and API secret produce valid responses when signed using Python (hmac.new(secret, msg, hashlib.sha256)), • But when I generate the HMAC signature using C++ (HMAC(EVP_sha256, ...) via OpenSSL), the exchange returns an invalid signature error. Environment: • Xcode 15.3 / macOS 14.x • OpenSSL installed via Homebrew • HMAC test vectors match Python’s output for basic strings (so HMAC lib seems correct) Yet when using the real API keys and dynamic timestamped messages, something differs enough to break verification — possibly due to UTF-8 encoding, memory alignment, or newline handling differences in the Xcode C++ runtime? Has anyone experienced subtle differences between Python and C++ HMAC-SHA256 behavior when compiled in Xcode? I’ve published a GitHub repo for reproducibility: 🔗 https://github.com/vanBaardewijk/bitvavo-cpp-signature-test Thanks in advance for any suggestions or insights. Sascha

Quinn, you've often suggested that to validate the other side of an XPC connection, we should use the audit token. But that's not available from the XPC object, whereas the PID is. So everyone uses the PID. While looking for something completely unrelated, I found this in the SecCode.h file OSStatus SecCodeCreateWithXPCMessage(xpc_object_t message, SecCSFlags flags, SecCodeRef * __nonnull CF_RETURNS_RETAINED target); Would this be the preferred way to do this now? At least from 11.0 and up. Like I said, I was looking for something completely unrelated and found this and don't have the cycles right now to try it. But it looks promising from the description and I wanted to check in with you about it in case you can say yes or no before I get a chance to test it. Thanks

I need to open p12 file from other iOS applications to import private key to my application. My app is set up to be able to open nay file with following plist <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key> <array> <dict> <key>CFBundleTypeName</key> <string>Files</string> <key>LSHandlerRank</key> <string>Default</string> <key>LSItemContentTypes</key> <array> <string>public.item</string> <string>public.data</string> <string>public.content</string> </array> </dict> </array> </dict> </plist> But my don't appear in share dialog from Files or Mail app for example. There are however other third party apps that can accept this file. Some of them use Share extension which I don't have, but some of them don't have it as far as I can understand. At least they don't present any UI and open apps directly. Also I've tried to specify com.rsa.pkcs-12 UTI directly but it didn't help. Also noticed that *.crt files have similar behaviour. Am I missing something about this specific file type?

I am working on adding RFC4217 Secure FTP with TLS by extending Mike Gleason's classic libncftp client library. I refactored the code to include an FTP channel abstraction with FTP channel abstraction types for TCP, TLS, and TCP with Opportunistic TLS types. The first implementation of those included BSD sockets that libncftp has always supported with the clear TCP channel type. I first embarked on extending the sockets implementation by adding TCP, TLS, and TCP with Opportunistic TLS channel abstraction types against the new, modern Network.framework C-based APIs, including using the “tricky” framer technique to employ a TCP with Opportunistic TLS FTP channel abstraction type to support explicit FTPS as specified by RFC4217 where you have to connect first in the clear with TCP, request AUTH TLS, and then start TLS after receiving positive confirmation. That all worked great. Unfortunately, at the end of that effort, I discovered that many modern FTPS server implementations (vsftpd, pure-ftpd, proftpd) mandate TLS session reuse / resumption across the control and data channels, specifying the identical session ID and cipher suites across the control and data channels. Since Network.framework lacked a necessary and equivalent to the Secure Transport SSLSetPeerID, I retrenched and rewrote the necessary TLS and TCP with Opportunistic TLS FTP channel abstraction types using the now-deprecated Secure Transport APIs atop the Network.framework-based TCP clear FTP channel type abstraction I had just written. Using the canonical test server I had been using throughout development, test.rebex.net, this Secure Transport solution seemed to work perfectly, working in clear, secure-control-only, and secure-control+data explicit FTPS operation. I then proceeded to expand testing to include a broad set of Microsoft FTP Service, pure-ftpd, vsftpd, proftpd, and other FTP servers identified on the Internet (a subset from this list: https://gist.github.com/mnjstwins/85ac8348d6faeb32b25908d447943300). In doing that testing, beyond test.rebex.net, I was unable to identify a single (among hundreds), that successfully work with secure-control+data explicit FTPS operation even though nearly all of them work with secure-control-only explicit FTPS operation. So, I started regressing my libncftp + Network.framework + Secure Transport implementation against curl 8.7.1 on macOS 14.7.2 “Sonoma": % which curl; `which curl` --version /usr/bin/curl curl 8.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin23.0) libcurl/8.7.1 (SecureTransport) LibreSSL/3.3.6 zlib/1.2.12 nghttp2/1.61.0 Release-Date: 2024-03-27 Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher gophers http https imap imaps ipfs ipns ldap ldaps mqtt pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp Features: alt-svc AsynchDNS GSS-API HSTS HTTP2 HTTPS-proxy IPv6 Kerberos Largefile libz MultiSSL NTLM SPNEGO SSL threadsafe UnixSockets I find that curl (also apparently written against Secure Transport) works in almost all of the cases my libncftp does not. This is a representative example: % ./samples/misc/ncftpgetbytes -d stderr --secure --explicit --secure-both ftps://ftp.sjtu.edu.cn:21/pub/README.NetInstall which fails in the secure-control+data case with errSSLClosedAbort on the data channel TLS handshake, just after ClientHello, attempts whereas: % curl -4 --verbose --ftp-pasv --ftp-ssl-reqd ftp://ftp.sjtu.edu.cn:21/pub/README.NetInstall succeeds. I took an in-depth look at the implementation of github.com/apple-oss-distributions/curl/ and git/github.com/apple-oss-distributions/Security/ to identify areas where my implementation was, perhaps, deficient relative to curl and its curl/lib/vtls/sectransp.c Secure Transport implementation. As far as I can tell, I am doing everything consistently with what the Apple OSS implementation of curl is doing. The analysis included: SSLSetALPNProtocols Not applicable for FTP; only used for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. SSLSetCertificate Should only be relevant when a custom, non-Keychain-based certificate is used. SSLSetEnabledCiphers This could be an issue; however, the cipher suite used for the data channel should be the same as that used for the control channel. curl talks about disabling "weak" cipher suites that are known-insecure even though the default suites macOS enables are unlikely to enable them. SSLSetProtocolVersionEnabled We do not appear to be getting a protocol version negotiation error, so this seems unlikely, but possible. SSLSetProtocolVersionMax We do not appear to be getting a protocol version negotiation error, so this seems unlikely, but possible. SSLSetProtocolVersionMin We do not appear to be getting a protocol version negotiation error, so this seems unlikely, but possible. SSLSetSessionOption( , kSSLSessionOptionFalseStart) curl does seem to enable this for certain versions of macOS and disables it for others. Possible. Running curl with the --false-start option does not seem to make a difference. SSLSetSessionOption( , kSSLSessionOptionSendOneByteRecord) Corresponds to "*****" which seems defaulted and is related to an SSL security flaw when using CBC-based block encryption ciphers, which is not applicable here. Based on that, further experiments I attempted included: Disable use of kSSLSessionOptionBreakOnServerAuth: No impact Assert use of kSSLSessionOptionFalseStart: No impact Assert use of kSSLSessionOptionSendOneByteRecord: No impact Use SSLSetProtocolVersionMin and SSLSetProtocolVersionMax in various combinations: No impact Use SSLSetProtocolVersionEnabled in various combinations: No impact Forcibly set a single cipher suite (TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, known to work with a given server): No impact Employ a SetDefaultCipherSuites function similar to what curl does (filtering out “weak” cipher suites): No impact Notably, I can never coax a similar set of cipher suites that macOS curl does with that technique. In fact, it publishes ciphers that aren’t even in <Security/CipherSuite.h> nor referenced by github.com/apple-oss-distributions/curl/curl/lib/vtls/sectransp.c. Assert use of kSSLSessionOptionAllowRenegotiation: No impact Assert use of kSSLSessionOptionEnableSessionTickets: No impact Looking at Wireshark, my ClientHello includes status_request, signed_certificate_timestamp, and extended_master_secret extensions whereas macOS curl's never do--same Secure Transport APIs. None of the above API experiments seem to influence the inclusion / exclusion of those three ClientHello additions. Any suggestions are welcomed that might shine a light on what native curl has access to that allows it to work with ST for these FTP secure-control+data use cases.

I work for Brave, a browser with ~80M users. We want to introduce a new system for automatic updates called Omaha 4 (O4). It's the same system that powers automatic updates in Chrome. O4 runs as a separate application on users' systems. For Chrome, this works as follows: An app called GoogleUpdater.app regularly checks for updates in the background. When a new version is found, then GoogleUpdater.app installs it into Chrome's installation directory /Applications/Google Chrome.app. But consider what this means: A separate application, GoogleUpdater.app, is able to modify Google Chrome.app. This is especially surprising because, for example, the built-in Terminal.app is not able to modify Google Chrome.app. Here's how you can check this for yourself: (Re-)install Chrome with its DMG installer. Run the following command in Terminal: mkdir /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/test. This works. Undo the command: rm -rf /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/test Start Chrome and close it again. mkdir /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/test now fails with "Operation not permitted". (These steps assume that Terminal does not have Full Disk Access and System Integrity Protection is enabled.) In other words, once Chrome was started at least once, another application (Terminal in this case) is no longer allowed to modify it. But at the same time, GoogleUpdater.app is able to modify Chrome. It regularly applies updates to the browser. For each update, this process begins with an mkdir call similarly to the one shown above. How is this possible? What is it in macOS that lets GoogleUpdater.app modify Chrome, but not another app such as Terminal? Note that Terminal is not sandboxed. I've checked that it's not related to codesigning or notarization issues. In our case, the main application (Brave) and the updater (BraveUpdater) are signed and notarized with the same certificate and have equivalent requirements, entitlements and provisioning profiles as Chrome and GoogleUpdater. The error that shows up in the Console for the disallowed mkdir call is: kernel (Sandbox) System Policy: mkdir(8917) deny(1) file-write-create /Applications/Google Chrome.app/foo (It's a similar error when BraveUpdater tries to install a new version into /Applications/Brave Browser.app.) The error goes away when I disable System Integrity Protection. But of course, we cannot ask users to do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.