Apple, in a bid to encourage tighter security in third-party apps, has opened its Security Framework and Common Crypto libraries to developers.
The Security Framework is used in iOS and OS X for managing keys, certificates, and trust policies, including storing the first two in the platforms’ keychains. Common Crypto is tied to functions like symmetric encryption, hash-based message authentication codes, and digests. The pair both depend on a shared library known as corecrypto.
“Although corecrypto does not directly provide programming interfaces for developers and should not be used by iOS or OS X apps, the source code is available to allow for verification of its security characteristics and correct functioning,” Apple said.
Apple has long been a proponent of tighter security, and even more so lately, in the face of growing privacy and hacking threats.
