Apple says side-loading apps could lead to iPhone security disaster

By Mayank Sharma for TechRadar
Thursday, October 14, 2021

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The report comes in the backdrop of the EU’s antitrust investigation against Apple initiated at the behest of Spotify, for its apparent anti-competitive practice of forcing app developers to use its proprietary App Store for app installations and payments.

Can of worms

Speaking to TechRadar Pro, Ilia Kolochenko, founder of ImmuniWeb, and a member of Europol Data Protection Experts Network explains that “security by obscurity” is one of the main pillars of Apple’s mobile security model that actually works pretty well compared to Android.

Kolochenko argues that by closing its mobile ecosystem to any third parties, Apple does indeed prevent countless mobile attacks. That said, he agrees that critical vulnerabilities in iOS that allow remote code execution expose the platform to abuse, and there have been reports of malicious iOS apps also managing to bypass Apple Store’s multilayered controls and get installed by unwitting users.

"That being said, even if security by obscuring is clearly not a panacea, opening Apple’s ecosystem to third parties will, undoubtedly, bring a tenfold increase in malware targeting iOS devices and undermine Apple’s security model,” believes Kolochenko. Read Full Article