Inosh's Blog

WSO2 EMM provides capability to auto enroll a device with the server. This is done through the use of mutual SSL/TSL underneath to authenticate clients. To follow this section basics of mutual SSL is needed[1]. Let's see how the enrollment flow works. A user with adequate permission to enroll devices access the certificate section of WSO2 EMM. User generates a certificate signed by a certificate authority, upload this certificate via the certificate section in EMM console. When generating the certificate, user must make sure they provide the serial number of the device as the common name of the certificate. When uploading the certificate to EMM, it is expected to provide the same serial number as well. User also embed the generated client certificate in the Agent and compiles the Agent. Please note that for each device that needs to enroll with EMM needs to have a certificate embedded. As described in the basics of mutual SSL article[1], when the user starts the An...

In contrast to usual 1-way SSL where client verifies the identity of the server, in mutual SSL, the server will also validate the identity of the client, so that both parties trust each other. This build a system with very tight security and avoid any need of username/password to be presented from the client, as long as the server is aware of which certificate belongs to which client. Let's take a look at how it all works, Before the process begins the client and server's certificates are stored in there relevant keystores. In case of Java these are jks files, and in WSO2 products certificates are stored in wso2carbon.jks and clienttruststore.jks in server side while the Android agent side certificates are stored in bouncycastle keystores(bks) files found in res/raw in Android agent source code.  These certificates are signed and issued by a certificate authority that both client and server are capable of communicating freely.  1. Client tries to access a protected ...

With Android 5.0, Google has introduced Device owner and device profile concepts to make android enterprise ready. Device owner app is an application with special privileges to perform task such as monitor and manage settings and other privileged tasks. This means in a literal sense,the devices ownership is given to the organization managing it making the device owner concept ideal for COPE scenario. Once the device ownership is assigned to an app, in order to remove it, the device needs to be factory reseted, for example in a situation where the device needs to be given to a different user.  When the device ownership is given to a specific app, the app gets access to a set of Android APIs that are only available to device owner app. These APIs are not available to regular Android apps. At a given time there can only be one device owner app in a device, which prevents another device owner app overriding the policies enforced by the first device owner app.  The service...