Hi, I’d like to confirm something regarding the hosting of the apple-app-site-association (AASA) file. We have a server that publicly hosts the AASA file and is accessible globally. However, this server sits behind an additional security layer (a security server/reverse proxy). My question is: Will this security layer affect Apple’s ability to access and validate the AASA file for Universal Links or App Clips? Are there specific requirements (e.g. headers, redirects, TLS versions, etc.) that we need to ensure the security server does not block or modify? Any guidance or best practices would be appreciated.

Hello, I have encountered several challenges related to System Integrity Protection (SIP) state detection and code signing requirements. I would like to seek clarification and guidance on the proper approach to programmatically determine the SIP state. Here are the issues I’ve encountered: XPC Code Signing Check APIs: APIs like setCodeSigningRequirement and setConnectionCodeSigningRequirement do not work when SIP disabled and that's ok given what SIP is. LaunchCodeRequirement API: When using Process.launchRequirement, the LaunchCodeRequirement API does not function anymore when SIP disabled. The IsSIPProtected requirement behaves in a way that is not clearly documented -- it appears to only apply to pre-installed Apple apps. Legacy APIs: Older APIs like SecCodeCheckValidity are likely to be non-functional, though I haven’t had the chance to validate this yet. Private API Concerns: So to mitigate those limitations I prefer my app to not even try to connect to untrusted XPC or launch untrusted Processes when SIP is disabled. The only way to determine SIP state I could find is a low-level C function csr_get_active_config. However, this function is not declared in any publicly available header file, indicating that it is a private API. Since private APIs cannot be used in App Store-distributed apps and are best avoided for Developer ID-signed apps, this does not seem like a viable solution. Given these limitations, what is the recommended and proper approach to programmatically determine the SIP state in a macOS application? Any insights or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I am developing a custom authorization plugin for macOS, and I’ve encountered an issue where the auth plugin view remains visible on the home screen for a few seconds after login. Issue Details: After entering valid credentials, I call setResult(.allow) in my plugin to proceed with login. The authentication succeeds, and macOS starts transitioning to the home screen. However, for a few seconds after login, the authorization plugin view is still visible on the home screen before it disappears. I have observed this issue even when using Apple's sample authorization plugin. Observation: This issue occurs without an external monitor (on a single built-in display). If I manually close the plugin window inside Destroy(AuthPlugin.mechanism), then the auth plugin views do not appear on the home screen, which seems to fix the issue. However, when I do this, a gray screen appears for about a second before the desktop environment fully loads. I suspect that the gray screen appears due to the time macOS takes to fully load the home screen environment after login. Questions: Why does the authorization plugin view persist on the home screen for a few seconds after login? Is manually closing the plugin window in Destroy(AuthPlugin.mechanism) the correct way to prevent this, or is there a better approach? Is my assumption that the gray screen appears due to the home screen not being fully loaded correct? If the gray screen is caused by home screen loading, is there a system notification or event I can listen to in order to know when the home screen has fully loaded?

For security reasons, my application needs to prohibit external devices. If it is determined that the current phone is connected to any external devices, including non MFI authenticated devices, the app will exit. Please tell me how to do it? Thanks for your help.

I’d like to confirm something regarding the hosting of the apple-app-site-association (AASA) file. We have a server that publicly hosts the AASA file and is accessible globally. However, this server sits behind an additional security layer (a security server/reverse proxy). My question is: Will this security layer affect Apple’s ability to access and validate the AASA file for Universal Links or App Clips? Are there specific requirements (e.g. headers, redirects, TLS versions, etc.) that we need to ensure the security server does not block or modify? Any guidance or best practices would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm developing a C++ plugin (.bundle) for a third-party host application (Autodesk Maya) on macOS, and I'm finalizing the design for our licensing system. The plugin is distributed outside the Mac App Store. My goal is to securely store a license key in the user's Keychain. After some research, my proposed implementation is as follows: On activation, store the license data in the user's login keychain as a Generic Password (kSecClassGenericPassword) using the SecItem APIs. To ensure the plugin can access the item when loaded by Maya, I will use a specific Keychain Access Group (e.g., MY_TEAM_ID.com.mywebsite). The final .bundle will be code-signed with our company's Developer ID certificate. The signature will include an entitlements file (.entitlements) that specifies the matching keychain-access-groups permission. My understanding is that this combination of a unique Keychain Access Group and a properly signed/entitled bundle is the key to getting reliable Keychain access. This should also correctly trigger the one-time user permission prompt on first use. Does this sound like the correct and most robust approach for this scenario? Are there any common pitfalls with a plugin's Keychain access from within a host app that I should be aware of? Thanks for any feedback!

Hi, I am using CryptoKit in my app. I am getting an error sometimes with some users. I log the description to Firebase but I am not sure what is it exactly about.  CryptoKit.CryptoKitError error 2  CryptoKit.CryptoKitError error 3 I receive both of these errors. I also save debug prints to a log file and let users share them with me. Logs are line-by-line encrypted but after getting these errors in the app also decryption of log files doesn't work and it throws these errors too. I couldn't reproduce the same error by myself, and I can't reach the user's logs so I am a little blind about what triggers this. It would be helpful to understand what these errors mean. Thanks

Hi all, I'm using a CryptoTokenKit (CTK) extension to perform code signing without having the private key stored on my laptop. The extension currently only supports the rsaSignatureDigestPKCS1v15SHA256 algorithm: func tokenSession(_ session: TKTokenSession, supports operation: TKTokenOperation, keyObjectID: TKToken.ObjectID, algorithm: TKTokenKeyAlgorithm) -> Bool { return algorithm.isAlgorithm(SecKeyAlgorithm.rsaSignatureDigestPKCS1v15SHA256) } This setup works perfectly with codesign, and signing completes without any issues. However, when I try to use productsign, the system correctly detects and delegates signing to my CTK extension, but it seems to always request rsaSignatureDigestPKCS1v15SHA1 instead: productsign --timestamp --sign <identity> unsigned.pkg signed.pkg productsign: using timestamp authority for signature productsign: signing product with identity "Developer ID Installer: <org> (<team>)" from keychain (null) ... Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=-50 "algid:sign:RSA:digest-PKCS1v15:SHA1: algorithm not supported by the key" ... productsign: error: Failed to sign the product. From what I understand, older versions of macOS used SHA1 for code signing, but codesign has since moved to SHA256 (at least when legacy compatibility isn't a concern). Oddly, productsign still seems to default to SHA1, even in 2025. Is there a known way to force productsign to use SHA256 instead of SHA1 for the signature digest algorithm? Or is there some flag or configuration I'm missing? Thanks in advance!

Hello, I have an application which uses a helper[1] to download[2] files. When files download is a DMG and user mounts the image to run the application from this DMG it doesn't pass Gatekeeper. It presents the "Application XYZ.app can't be opened.". Same file downloaded via Safari shows a different dialog, the "XYZ.app is an app downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?" In the system log I see this line: exec of /Volumes/SampleApp/SampleApp.app/Contents/MacOS/SampleApp denied since it was quarantined by Download\x20Helper and created without user consent, qtn-flags was 0x00000187 The application is running sandboxed and hardened, the main application has com.apple.security.files.downloads.read-write entitlement. Everything is signed by DeveloperID and passes all checks[3]. I tried to check the responsible process[4] of the helper. Then trivial stuff like download folder access in System Settings/Privacy & Security/Files & Folders. Everything seems to be fine. For what it worths the value of quarantine attribute is following: com.apple.quarantine: 0087;6723b80e;My App; The Safari downloaded one posses: com.apple.quarantine: 0083;6723b9fa;Safari;02162070-2561-42BE-B30B-19A0E94FE7CA Also tried a few more ways and got to 0081 with Edge and 0082 with a sample app with similar setup. Not sure if that has any meaning. What could I be doing wrong that Gatekeeper right away refuses to run the application from DMG instead of showing the dialog like in other cases? [1] The executable is in application bundle located in Contents/Helpers/DownloadHelper.app in the main application bundle. [2] Nothing fancy, curl + regular POSIX file operations [3] codesign, syspolicy_check, spctl [4] launchctl procinfo pid

Can you please give me a hand with importing certificates under MacOS? I want to connect to Wi-Fi with 802.1X authentication (EAP-TLS) using a certificate that my homebrew application imported into my data protection keychain, but the imported certificate does not show up and I cannot select the certificate. It also does not show up in the Keychain Access app. One method I have tried is to import it into the data protection keychain by using the SecItemAdd function and setting kSecUseDataProtectionKeychain to true, but it does not work. Is there a better way to do this? ID: for id in identities { let identityParams: [String: Any] = [ kSecValueRef as String: id, kSecReturnPersistentRef as String: true, kSecUseDataProtectionKeychain as String: true ] let addIdentityStatus = SecItemAdd(identityParams as CFDictionary, nil) if addIdentityStatus == errSecSuccess { print("Successfully added the ID.: \(addIdentityStatus)") } else { print("Failed to add the ID.: \(addIdentityStatus)") } } Certificate: for cert in certificates { let certParams: [String: Any] = [ kSecValueRef as String: cert, kSecReturnPersistentRef as String: true, kSecUseDataProtectionKeychain as String: true ] let addCertStatus = SecItemAdd(certParams as CFDictionary, nil) if addCertStatus == errSecSuccess { print("Successfully added the certificate.: (\(addCertStatus))") } else { print("Failed to add the certificate.: (\(addCertStatus))") } } Private key: for privateKey in keys { let keyTag = UUID().uuidString.data(using: .utf8)! let keyParams: [String: Any] = [ kSecAttrApplicationTag as String: keyTag, kSecValueRef as String: privateKey, kSecReturnPersistentRef as String: true, kSecUseDataProtectionKeychain as String: true ] let addKeyStatus = SecItemAdd(keyParams as CFDictionary, nil) if addKeyStatus == errSecSuccess { print("Successfully added the private key.: \(addKeyStatus)") } else { print("Failed to add the private key.: \(addKeyStatus)") } }

We have a macOS app that has a Photos Extension, which shares documents with the app via an app group container. Historically we used to have an iOS-style group identifier (group.${TeamIdentifier}${groupName}), because we were lead by the web interface in the developer portal to believe this to be the right way to name groups. Later with the first macOS 15 betas last year there was a bug with the operating system warning users, our app would access data from different apps, but it was our own app group container directory. Therefore we added a macOS-style group identifier (${TeamIdentifier}${groupName}) and wrote a migration of documents to the new group container directory. So basically we need to have access to these two app group containers for the foreseeable future. Now with the introduction of iOS-style group identifiers for macOS, Xcode Cloud no longer archives our app for TestFlight or AppStore, because it complains: ITMS-90286: Invalid code signing entitlements - Your application bundle’s signature contains code signing entitlements that aren’t supported on macOS. Specifically, the “[group.${TeamIdentifier}${groupName}, ${TeamIdentifier}${groupName}]” value for the com.apple.security.application-groups key in isn’t supported. This value should be a string or an array of strings, where each string is the “group” value or your Team ID, followed by a dot (“.”), followed by the group name. If you're using the “group” prefix, verify that the provisioning profile used to sign the app contains the com.apple.security.application-groups entitlement and its associated value(s). We have included the iOS-style group identifier in the provisioning profile, generated automatically, but can't do the same for the macOS-style group identifier, because the web interface only accepts identifiers starting with "group". How can we get Xcode Cloud to archive our app again using both group identifiers? Thanks in advance

First, I do not publish my application to the AppStore, but I need to customize a sandbox environment. It seems that sandbox-exec cannot configure entitlements, so I have used some other APIs, such as sandbox_compile_entitlements and sandbox_apply_container. When encountering the entitlement "com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-only", I am unsure how to correctly write sandbox profile to implement this. Can anyone help me?

Hi, I have a certificate, how can I display the certificate content in my Mac app just like Keychain Access app does. Can I popup the certificate content dialog just like Keychain Access app?

I requested permission to use the Family Controls entitlement two weeks ago, and I have not received a response or status update. I have been to that page where it says "Thank you! We'll get back to you soon!" so many times.

Has anyone here encountered this? It's driving me crazy. It appears on launch. App Sandbox is enabled. The proper entitlement is selected (com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write) I believe this is causing an issue with app functionality for users on different machines. There is zero documentation across the internet on this problem. I am on macOS 26 beta. This error appears in both Xcode and Xcode-beta. Please help! Thank you, Logan

We are experiencing a significant issue with macOS security alerts that began on July 9th, at approximately 4:40 AM UTC. This alert is incorrectly identifying output files from our snippet tests as malware, causing these files to be blocked and moved to the Trash. This is completely disrupting our automated testing workflows. Issue Description: Alert: We are seeing the "Malware Blocked and Moved to Trash" popup window. Affected Files: The security alert triggers when attempting to execute .par files generated as outputs from our snippet tests. These .par files are unique to each individual test run; they are not a single, static tool. System-Wide Impact: This issue is impacting multiple macOS hosts across our testing infrastructure. Timeline: The issue began abruptly on July 9th, at approximately 4:40 AM UTC. Before that time, our tests were functioning correctly. macOS Versions: The problem is occurring on hosts running both macOS 14.x and 15.x. Experimental Host: Even after upgrading an experimental host to macOS 15.6 beta 2, the issue persisted. Local execution: The issue can be reproduced locally. Observations: The security system is consistently flagging these snippet test output files as malware. Since each test generates a new .par file, and this issue is impacting all generated files, the root cause doesn't appear to be specific to the code within the .par files themselves. This issue is impacting all the snippet tests, making us believe that the root cause is not related to our code. The sudden and widespread nature of the issue strongly suggests a change in a security database or rule, rather than a change in our testing code. Questions: Could a recent update to the XProtect database be the cause of this false positive? Are there any known issues or recent changes in macOS security mechanisms that could cause this kind of widespread and sudden impact? What is the recommended way to diagnose and resolve this kind of false positive? We appreciate any guidance or assistance you can provide. Thank you.

Hi,is there an option to mark the file or folder or item stored in user defaults ... not to be backed up when doing unencrypted backup in iTunes?We are developing iOS app that contains sensitive data. But even if we enable Data Protection for the iOS app it can be backed up on mac unencrypted using iTunes. Is there a way to allow backing up content only if the backup is encrypted?

I was basically saving items into the Keychain with the following query dictionary: let query: [String: Any] = [ kSecClass as String: kSecClassGenericPassword, kSecAttrAccount as String: key, kSecValueData as String: value, kSecAttrAccessible as String: kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock ] Where key is a String value and value is a Data that used to be a String. I was getting the following error: code: -25299 description: The specified item already exists in the keychain After a lot of digging in I saw that I needed to add kSecAttrService to the dictionary and after that it all started working. The service value is a String value. let query: [String: Any] = [ kSecClass as String: kSecClassGenericPassword, kSecAttrService as String: service, kSecAttrAccount as String: key, kSecValueData as String: value, kSecAttrAccessible as String: kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock ] These were the articles that suggested adding the kSecAttrService parameter: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11672200 https://stackoverflow.com/a/58233542 But in the same code base I found that other developers were saving using a dictionary similar to the one I first provided and it works: var query: [String : Any] = [ kSecClass as String : kSecClassGenericPassword as String, kSecAttrAccount as String : key, kSecValueData as String : data ] I don't know how to explain why my first implementation didn't work even though it was similar to what was already in the code base but the second approach worked well. Regardless of the query dictionary, this is how I'm saving things: static func save(value: Data, key: String, service: String) -> KeyChainOperationStatus { logInfo("Save Value - started, key: \(key), service: \(service)") let query: [String: Any] = [ kSecClass as String: kSecClassGenericPassword, kSecAttrService as String: service, kSecAttrAccount as String: key, kSecValueData as String: value, kSecAttrAccessible as String: kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock ] // Remove any existing key let cleanUpStatus = SecItemDelete(query as CFDictionary) let cleanUpStatusDescription = SecCopyErrorMessageString(cleanUpStatus, nil)?.asString ?? "__cleanup_status_unavailable" logInfo("Save Value - cleanup status: \(cleanUpStatus), description: \(cleanUpStatusDescription)") guard cleanUpStatus == errSecSuccess || cleanUpStatus == errSecItemNotFound else { logError("Save Value - Failed cleaning up KeyChain") return .cleanupFailed(code: cleanUpStatus) } // Add the new key let saveStatus = SecItemAdd(query as CFDictionary, nil) let saveStatusDescription = SecCopyErrorMessageString(saveStatus, nil)?.asString ?? "__save_status_unavailable" logInfo("Save Value - save status [\(saveStatus)] : \(saveStatusDescription)") guard saveStatus == errSecSuccess else { logError("Save Value - Failed saving new value into KeyChain") return .savingFailed(code: saveStatus) } return .successs }

I am using the CryptoKit SecureEnclave enum to generate Secure Enclave keys. I've got a couple of questions: What is the lifetime of these keys? When I don't store them somewhere, how does the Secure Enclave know they are gone? Do backups impact these keys? I.e. can I lose access to the key when I restore a backup? Do these keys count to the total storage capacity of the Secure Enclave? If I recall correctly, the Secure Enclave has a limited storage capacity. Do the SecureEnclave key instances count towards this storage capacity? What is the dataRepresentation and how can I use this? I'd like to store the Secure Enclave (preferably not in the Keychain due to its limitations). Is it "okay" to store this elsewhere, for instance in a file or in the UserDefaults? Can the dataRepresentation be used in other apps? If I had the capability of extracting the dataRepresentation as an attacker, could I then rebuild that key in my malicious app, as the key can be rebuilt with the Secure Enclave on the same device, or are there measures in place to prevent this (sandbox, bundle id, etc.)

Hello! I do know apple does not support electron, but I do not think this is an electron related issue, rather something I am doing wrong. I'd be curious to find out why the keychain login is happenning after my app has been signed with the bundleid, entitlements, and provision profile. Before using the provision profile I did not have this issue, but it is needed for assessments feature. I'm trying to ship an Electron / macOS desktop app that must run inside Automatic Assessment Configuration. The build signs and notarizes successfully, and assessment mode itself starts on Apple-arm64 machines, but every single launch shows the system dialog that asks to allow access to the "login" keychain. The dialog appears on totally fresh user accounts, so it's not tied to anything I store there. It has happened ever since I have added the provision profile to the electron builder to finally test assessment out. entitlements.inherit.plist keys &lt;key&gt;com.apple.security.cs.allow-jit&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; entitlements.plist keys: &lt;key&gt;com.apple.security.cs.allow-jit&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.developer.automatic-assessment-configuration&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; I'm honestly not sure whether the keychain is expected, but I have tried a lot of entitlement combinations to get rid of It. Electron builder is doing the signing, and we manually use the notary tool to notarize but probably irrelevant. mac: { notarize: false, target: 'dir', entitlements: 'buildResources/entitlements.mac.plist', provisioningProfile: 'buildResources/xyu.provisionprofile', entitlementsInherit: 'buildResources/entitlements.mac.inherit.plist', Any lead is welcome!