Apple’s Enterprise Certificates Are Being Abused By Gambling And Porn Apps

According to a report from TechCrunch, after Apple withdrew the enterprise certificates of Google and Facebook due to their misusing these certificates to distribute applications not available on the App Store, the company has recently detected a series of pornographic and gambling apps are using the similar process to break its rules.

TechCrunch has stated that a lot of “sideloaded” applications or enterprise apps from thousands of websites, which have not been provided on the App Store, can now be installed on an iDevice like iPhone or iPad. Of course, users will have to jailbreak their devices before; however, they clearly gain enterprise certificates to run such these apps.

The gambling apps enable users to withdraw and deposit real money, whilst porn apps let them watch and pour money on hardcore pornography. According to Apple’s terms, those are restricted actions towards the apps available in the App Store.

In addition, a lot of the apps owning the certification were discovered to use fake names, as well as names without description for their companies. This move aimed to help these companies not to be suspected or detected.

Meanwhile, some companies choose other ways to gain enterprise certificates: they use the real names of other companies which have no relation with their businesses.

As per the developers, some believe they have used public information regarding other businesses to gain the approval of enterprise certificates.

In fact, Apple has seemingly removed some apps defying its terms, but this shows us an actual situation the company is facing. It requires the companies to undertake to leverage their applications with its approved enterprise certificates for only internal use. However, nothing can guarantee that all of these companies will comply with this promise. Till now, the only solution Apple is applying is removing all detected apps.