Security researcher Will Strafach found Uber’s app enjoying an unusual Apple iOS security permission not used by any other app. Called com.apple.private.allow-explicit-graphics-priority, this permission allowed Uber’s app to see what was on the user’s screen even if the Uber app was not active.
An Uber spokesperson explained the purpose of this security permission: “It was used for an old version of the Apple Watch app, specifically to run the heavy lifting of rendering maps on your phone & then send the rendering to the Watch app.” The spokesperson continued: “Apple gave us this permission years because Apple Watch couldn’t handle our maps rendering.”
Uber indicated that it used the entitlement only in version 8.2 of its app, and that a subsequent update from Apple fixed the memory issue for Apple Watch and made this workaround unnecessary.