How to Prevent App Signing by Unauthorized Developers

Last updated May 24, 2021 by Alan Bavosa

Fraudsters and other cyber-criminals routinely copy, clone, or embed malware inside legitimate mobile apps. After that, they repackage, re-sign and re-distribute these fake/malicious apps on a wide variety of app stores and for lots of different reasons, sometimes even masquerading as the original owner/developer of the app.

Learn the 3 easy steps to prevent iOS apps against mobile piracy by validating that the app has been signed by authorized developers only.

Why Should Developers protect iOS apps with Secure App Signature Validation?

Any app that was copied using a jailbroken phone, either distributed from the app store or by any other method, can be modified, re-signed and re-distributed to the App Store, to an alternative app store, or sent to another individual for malicious use.

What is Appdome Secure App Signature for iOS?

Appdome’s Secure App Signature feature validates the app signature to ensure the app has been signed by an authorized developer. When you build an iOS with Appdome’s Secure App Signature feature, Appdome saves the application identifier at the time the app is signed by the authorized developer. If the application identifier has changed, Appdome will detect it and prevent the app from running.

Secure App Signature prevents mobile app piracy, as well as fakes, clones, mods by ensuring that only authorized developers can sign and distribute apps.

Appdome is a no-code mobile app security platform designed to add security features, like Secure App Signature to mobile apps without coding. This KB article shows mobile developers, DevSec and security professionals how to use Appdome’s simple ‘click to build’ user interface to quickly and easily validate the app’s signature for an iOS to prevent mobile piracy.

3 Easy Steps to add Secure App Signature to iOS apps

Please follow these 3 easy steps to protect iOS apps against piracy using Secure App Signature

Upload an app
In the Build Tab, under Anti-Fraud, Select Mobile Piracy Prevention and Toggle on Secure App Signature (shown below)
Click Build My App

secure.app.signature

Congratulations! The mobile app is now protected using Secure App Signature.

Appdome’s no-code mobile app security platform offers mobile developers, DevSec and security professionals a convenient and reliable way to protect iOS apps using Secure App Signature. When a user clicks “Build My App,” Appdome leverages a microservice architecture filled with 1000s of security plugins, and an adaptive code generation engine that matches the correct required plugins to the development environment, frameworks, and methods in each app.

Prerequisites to Secure App Signature

Appdome account (If you don’t have an Appdome account, create a free Appdome account here)
A license to Secure App Signature
Mobile App
Signing Credentials (e.g., signing certificates and provisioning profile)

No Coding Dependency

Using Appdome, there are no development or coding prerequisites to build secured apps using Secure App Signature to prevent mobile piracy for iOS apps. There is no SDK and no library to manually code or implement in the app. The Appdome technology adds the relevant standards, frameworks, stores, and logic to the app automatically, with no manual development work at all.

How to Sign & Publish Secured Mobile Apps Built on Appdome

After successfully securing your app using Appdome, there are several available options to complete your project, depending on your app lifecycle or workflow. These include:

Signing Secure iOS and Android apps
Customizing, Configuring & Branding Secure Mobile Apps
Deploying/Publishing Secure mobile apps to Public or Private app stores

Or, see this quick reference Releasing Secured Android & iOS Apps built on Appdome.

More Mobile App Security Resources

Here are a few related resources:

How to Prevent non-approved Android, iOS app store publishing

Check out Appdome Mobile Piracy Prevention or request a demo at any time.

If you have any questions, please send them our way at support@appdome.com or via the chat window on the Appdome platform.

Thank you!

Thanks for visiting Appdome! Our mission is to secure every app on the planet by making mobile app security easy. We hope we’re living up to the mission with your project. If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for free.