Apple revokes Facebook’s “enterprise certificate”; Facebook staff can no longer use any internal company iOS apps

Apple revokes Facebook’s “enterprise certificate”; Facebook staff can no longer use any internal company iOS apps

Apple just this morning revoked Facebook’s enterprise certificate for this exact same activity, which has rendered all of Facebook’s internal apps nonoperational and has created chaos at Facebook’s headquarters. Facebook employees are not able to use any of the internal apps that they rely on to get work done.

Source: Google Also Exploiting Enterprise Certificates to Bypass iOS App Store for Data Collection [Update: Disabled] – MacRumors

Apple’s software development system is highly controlled. Generally, apps may only be distributed to other users after approval by Apple, and then through the iOS app store. However, because some organizations need to use proprietary apps internally, Apple can provide a “developer enterprise certificate” that enables organizations to approve internally developed iOS apps for internal use only. Facebook violated the terms of that feature – and used it to distribute a deep spying app for iOS. Apple has revoked Facebook’s enterprise certificate. This shuts down all Facebook corporate internal iOS apps.

From the news report, Google has been doing something similar and might also have its developer enterprise certificate revoked.

Update: Google’s developer certificate was also revoked. Facebook’s was re-instated after 48 hours. Facebook, per TechCrunch, appears to have lied about aspects of this situation.

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