Should Apple be Thanking This Google Developer?

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) employee and researcher Elie Bursztein might be Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) favorite rival developer (if such a thing exists) after he reported several vulnerabilities that he discovered in Apple’s App Store last July. Apple completed its fix of the vulnerability on March 8.

The vulnerabilities arose from a lack of encryption for Apple’s App Store, specifically from Apple not having HTTPS enabled for all of its network traffic for its App Store. As Bursztein states on his personal blog, “Enabling HTTPS and ensuring certificates validity is the most important thing you can do to secure your app communication.”

On his blog, Bursztein demonstrates the various types of attacks that can be performed on a vulnerable system that lacks encryption, including:  password stealing, app swapping (forcing the user to buy or install an unwanted app), fake app upgrades, preventing app installation, and privacy leaks.