How to Encrypt iOS App Photos Outside Camera Roll

Learn to Prevent other iOS apps from accessing your app's photos in iOS apps, in mobile CI/CD with a Data-Driven DevSecOps™ build system.

What is the App-only Photos Protection?

Appdome’s App Only Photos feature protects mobile app privacy and data by keeping mobile app photos private and preventing other apps from accessing photos taken from the protected app. Appdome’s APP-ONLY PHOTOS feature ensures that photos taken by a protected application are accessible only within the context of the protected app – no other apps can access those photos.

Why Prevent Other iOS Apps from Accessing Your App's Photos?

APP-ONLY PHOTOS protects any mobile app photos taken by the application. When a photo is taken by a user within the application, Appdome intercepts the “saving” request and saves the photo to the application’s private files, which makes the photes inaccessible to the iOS camera app ro another mobile app on the device.  Furthermore, with Appdome’s TOTALData Encryption the app photos and sensitive data will be encrypted using AES 256  encryption.

Preventing other iOS apps from accessing your app's photos on iOS apps by Using Appdome

On Appdome, follow these 3 simple steps to create self-defending iOS Apps that Prevent other iOS apps from accessing your app's photos without an SDK or gateway:

1. Upload the Mobile App to Appdome.

   1. Upload an app to Appdome’s Mobile App Security Build System

   2. Upload Method: Appdome Console or DEV-API
   3. iOS Formats: .ipa

2. Build the feature: App Only Photos.

   1. Building App Only Photos by using Appdome’s DEV-API:

      1. Create and name the Fusion Set (security template) that will contain the App Only Photos feature as shown below:
      

      Figure 1: Fusion Set that will contain the App Only Photos feature
      Note: Naming the Fusion Set to correspond to the protection(s) selected is for illustration purposes only (not required).

      2. Follow the steps in Sections 2.2.1-2.2.2 of this article, Building the App Only Photos feature via Appdome Console, to add the App Only Photos feature to this Fusion Set.

      3. Open the Fusion Set Detail Summary by clicking the “...” symbol on the far-right corner of the Fusion Set, as shown in Figure 1 above, and get the Fusion Set ID from the Fusion Set Detail Summary (as shown below):

         Figure 2: Fusion Set Detail Summary
         Note: Annotating the Fusion Set to identify the protection(s) selected is optional only (not mandatory).

      4. Follow the instructions below to use the Fusion Set ID inside any standard mobile DevOps or CI/CD toolkit like Bitrise, App Center, Jenkins, Travis, Team City, Cirlce CI or other system:

         1. Build an API for the app – for instructions, see the tasks under Appdome API Reference Guide
         2. Look for sample APIs in Appdome’s GitHub Repository

   2. Building the App Only Photos feature via Appdome Console

      To build the App Only Photos protection by using Appdome Console, follow the instructions below.

      1. Where: Inside the Appdome Console, go to Build > Security Tab > Mobile Privacy section
      2. How: Toggle (turn ON) App Only Photos, as shown below.
         If needed, Customize the Threat Notification to be displayed to the mobile end-user in a standard OS dialog notification when Appdome Prevents other iOS apps from accessing your app's photos.

         Figure 3: Prevent other iOS apps from accessing your app's photos option
         Note: The App Compromise Notification contains an easy to follow default remediation path for the mobile app end user. You can customize this message as required to achieve brand specific support, workflow or other messaging.

      3. When you select the App Only Photos you'll notice that your Fusion Set you created in step 2.1.1 now bears the icon of the protection category that contains App Only Photos

         

         Figure 4: Fusion Set that displays the newly added App Only Photos protection

      4. Optional Configuration with App Only Photos:

         1. Combined Camera Roll

            Make the public (device) camera roll accessible to your application. Private photos will only be accessible to your application.

         2. Photos Favicon

            Add this customized icon as a favicon to private photos’ thumbnails.

      5. Click Build My App at the bottom of the Build Workflow (shown in Figure 3).

   Congratulations!  The App Only Photos protection is now added to the mobile app

3. Certify the App Only Photos feature in iOS Apps.

   After building App Only Photos, Appdome generates a Certified Secure™ certificate to guarantee that the App Only Photos protection has been added and is protecting the app. To verify that the App Only Photos protection has been added to the mobile app, locate the protection in the Certified Secure™ certificate as shown below:

   Figure 5: Certified Secure™ certificate

   Each Certified Secure™ certificate provides DevOps and DevSecOps organizations the entire workflow summary, audit trail of each build, and proof of protection that App Only Photos has been added to each iOS app. Certified Secure provides instant and in-line DevSecOps compliance certification that App Only Photos and other mobile app security features are in each build of the mobile app