How We Secured FCM Tokens in PDP Mobile
While everyone is discussing privacy-by-default and new leaks, we encrypted FCM tokens symmetrically before saving them to the database so they can’t just be taken and used for an attack.
While everyone is discussing privacy-by-default and new leaks, we added an important layer of protection on our side: we encrypt FCM tokens symmetrically before saving them to the database.
Why? If the database were ever compromised, the tokens couldn’t just be taken and used for mass push notifications to residents of the housing complex. That’s not just “ugh, inconvenient” — it’s a very real attack vector.
We then put together a full protection chain: on the device, tokens are stored in encrypted MMKV, and the keys are in Secure Keychain/Keystore. So even if someone digs deeper, the path to the data becomes much harder for an attacker.
One of those cases where it’s better to lock things down properly once than to be putting out a prod fire on Friday evening 😅