Paulo Alto network researchers have found a new threat to Apple devices in China. WireLurker, the new malware hides itself inside some app's sleeve and loads itself on the iOS devices through a USB connection.
Researchers said the Trojan has mostly been found in a third-party appstore in China. The malware can hide itself in a Mac system and whenever Apple devices, like the iPhone or iPads are connected via USB, the Trojan injects itself into the device under the hood of an app.
The malware reportedly attacks both jail-broken and non-jailbroken devices. Researchers found around 467 infected apps in this third-party application store. Naming Maiyadi, an App store, is very popular among Chinese Apple users. Several reputed iOS apps like 'The Sims 3', 'International Snooker 2012' and 'Pro Evolution Soccer 2014' have been found seeded with WireLurker Trojan.
The WireLurker is one of the biggest threats found in iOS devices. Currently attacking only Chinese iOS devices, this malware is actually capable of infecting any iOS operating system-based device, like iPhone, iPad, iMac and Macbooks. Similar in behaving to any potential malware, WireLurker is also the first malware which can infect even non-jailbroken devices.
Since its evolution, WireLurker has been downloaded 3.56,104 times, hence hundreds of thousands of Apple device users have been infected.
Once infected, the malware is programmed to collect sensitive user information like call logs, phonebook contacts, messages and other information considered as private.
Apple has been alerting its users for a long time on not using any third-party app store for installing apps. They also advised users against downloading anything from a non-trusted site. And jailbreaking the devices is a strict no-no to avoid such attacks. The user should also avoid plugging the device into any unknown computer for charging purposes.
The intent of developing this malware is unclear, however, experts believe this should come to light soon. But, this attack has lead the path into Apple devices, which may lead to the creation to many other malware and viruses in future.
Last week, a Swedish researcher announced having found a way to get the root access of any Yosemite, Apple's latest OS X based operating system. Apple researchers are busy patching this vulnerability naming 'RootPipe'.
