Chapter 9
Security

You remember that one time when Apple was totally pwned by hackers?

Probably not, right? As of early 2018, it appears that neither Apple or any of its devices have ever been victimized by widespread hacking efforts. There was a scandal with some sensitive celebrity photos obtained from iCloud in 2014, but that turned out to be the result of phishing attacks, not a security weakness in iCloud. Dig in to other stories on the web and they often turn out to only affect jailbroken devices, or they have other non-technical explanations.

It’s kind of remarkable that Apple’s stuff has held up, considering what an attractive target they must be: hundreds of millions of credit cards stored in the iTunes Store, over a billion devices connected to the internet, and the personal and financial data of all its users, stored on devices and in iCloud.

It’s a credit to Apple’s focus on security, protecting users’ privacy and personal information that their defenses have held up over the years. The focus on security is pervasive throughout the Apple platforms, and as a developer, you can’t help but run up against them sometimes.

In this chapter, you’ll see how Xcode manages the security of your apps. You’ll see how security pervades your use of the platform APIs, and the role it plays in putting your apps onto devices and submitting them to the App Store.