Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s App Store has been infected by malicious apps that could steal a user’s data from their Apple devices. The App Store has always boasted of being malware free, which has caused Apple to double their effort in the wake of recent security breaches in their App Store.
The App Store has been in the news for the wrong reasons in the last year or so. There have been cases where a large number of malicious apps have been found on the App Store that could affect an even larger number of devices. This has raised questions over the reviewing and checking procedure that Apple has in place to check a new app that is pushed by a developer on their App store.
Although nothing major has happened to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s devices due to the security breaches that have surfaced recently, the situation is alarming. In the last two months alone, thousands of malicious apps have been discovered on the App Store by researchers. These apps are malicious in that they have the capability of stealing or compromising data stored on an Apple device if that app is installed.
FireEye recently disclosed that it had discovered around 3,000 apps in the App Stores of USA and China that contained malicious ad library called mobiSage SDK. It has been revealed that mobiSage SDK was released by a Chinese company called adSage.
Peter Gilbert (Software Engineer) said:
“The common theme we are seeing is this new wave of attacks against iPhones and against iOS.”
Currently, it is assumed that the developers did not have any idea of the potential damage their app could cause. People have even suggested that malicious users may have added this functionality to adSage’s app. The mobiSage SDK discovery comes a little over a month after the XCodeGhost discovery, where around 4,000 apps were found to be infected with a malicious version of Apple’s XCode development tool.
This goes to show that hackers are concentrating their efforts on targeting the App Store’s reputation and reliability of being malware free. The two instances have not led to any major damage and had been brought to the notice of Apple by researchers, but they have put a question mark over the reliability of the App Store. This is something that had never happened before.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s has always had the advantage over Google in that the App Store had never had any problems with malware as much as the Google Play Store has. Apple’s reviewing of apps when they are released by developers is not very clear to anyone. Developers have always complained that it takes too long, but they had always managed to stamp out the suspicion factor before.
So, in a bid to clear the small freckles of dirt that have managed to appear on the reputation of the App Store, Apple will be on the lookout for future attempts by hackers to infiltrate their App Store.
