As we reported recently, Apple’s App Store was a victim of a large-scale attack, infecting a bunch of iPhone and iPad apps, mostly from China, with malware.
The malware, aptly named XcodeGhost owing to the way it got past App Store’s security in the first place, has so far infected hundreds of legitimate apps on the App Store, and in turn has made its way through to millions of iOS devices by now across the globe. All of this has resulted in a major security nightmare for the Cupertino tech giant.
In a statement to Reuters, Apple spokesperson has now confirmed the breach and suggested that Apple has removed all the infected apps from the App Store. Earlier, about 39 legitimate iOS apps were identified as having been infected, and now the list has mounted to a staggering 85 according to some sources, while others pitch the number at over a hundred.
Here are some of the major apps that are/were found to be infected:
- air2
- AmHexinForPad
- Angry Birds 2 (Chinese App Store only)
- CamCard
- CamScanner
- Card Safe
- China Unicom Mobile Office
- CITIC Bank move card space
- CSMBP-AppStore
- CuteCUT
- DataMonitor
- Didi Chuxing
- Eyes Wide
- FlappyCircle
- Flush
- Freedom Battle
- golfsense
- golfsensehd
- guaji_gangtai en
- Guitar Master
- Himalayan
- Hot stock market
- InstaFollower
- installer
- Jane book
- Lazy weekend
- Lifesmart
- Mara Mara
- Marital bed
- Microblogging camera
- MobileTicket
- Musical.ly
- NetEase
- nice dev
- OPlayer
- OPlayer Lite
- PDFReader
- Perfect365
- Pocket billing
- PocketScanner
- Poor tour
- QYER
- Railway 12306
- SaveSnap
- Stocks open class
- SuperJewelsQuest2
- Telephone attribution assistant
- The driver drops
- The Kitchen
- Three new board
- TinyDeal.com
- Wallpapers10000
- Watercress reading
- WeLoop
- WhiteTile
- WinZip
- WinZip Sector
- WinZip Standard
If you have any of these apps installed on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, we suggest deleting them right now and wait for Apple to give a green signal for the new updated and malware-free version of these apps.
So how did all of these apps get infected in the first place? It turns out that developers, mostly from China, downloaded a counterfeit version of Apple’s Xcode program which resulted in the compiled apps containing the said malware. Apple’s Xcode is available to download for free from the Mac App Store but these developers apparently chose to downloaded the counterfeit version of Xcode from a third-party site because Apple’s servers were slow to download from China.
We’ll keep you updated on more information regarding XcodeGhost malware as it becomes available. Stay tuned.
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