China to gain official access to Apple’s operating system source codes

Apple has been on the line of fire in China for a, while with the Chinese government concerned over their security threats related to data. China has always been concerned about other countries, especially the US intelligence agencies, snooping into the country.

In a recent report on a Chinese website, Beijing News, Apple has agreed to give exclusive access to the Chinese government’s security analysts to review the source codes of the operating systems. If Apple needs to continue business in China, the tech giant will have to bow down and open up their operating systems for analysis.

QZ reported that China’s State Internet Information Office will conduct various security checks on Apple’s Mac OS X and iOS platforms to confirm and anything amiss. China is concerned with the way the Apple operating systems are handling user data. The major concerns are with Apple devices, such as iPhones and iPads, enable the company (and/or the US intelligence agencies) to spy on Chinese citizens.

Previous rumours stated that Apple had built backdoors into their operating systems to allow third-party apps spy on the user data. However, that turned out to be untrue and Apple stated that they would never do that in future too. The Chinese do not want to take Apple’s word on this and want to let the Chinese internet safety department do their analysis to keep the consumers privacy safe.

Apple would have to openly share the entire source code with the Chinese security agency in order to maintain relationship with the Mainland and sell its goods, since China is one of the most important market for Apple.

Handing over the source codes would mean that China would get a complete knowhow on how the Apple operating system functions. Getting inside information about how the operating system works would make it easier for the Chinese government to find bugs and vulnerabilities in Apple’s products. However, the threat also arises that China could exploit these vulnerabilities (if any) and hack or attack iPhones, iPads and Macs across the world.

This is alarming news as the move could make Apple users vulnerable to being spied upon by the Chinese government. However, analysts state that it would be impossible for China to spy on users outside the country, and even if they did manage to do it, someone at Apple would definitely be alerted.