Now, here’s one more reason not to get an iPhone, even more so a jail-broken one at that. The malware is known as AdTheif or Spad and has successfully hijacked more than 75,000 iPhone devices and infected more than 22 million adverts! The malicious software came from China and went around being undetected for around 4 months but the thing is it can only infect jail-broken devices, so normal iPhone users are safe but that still doesn’t change the fact iPhones are awful.
The malicious software was detected back in March by Claud Xiao but the Fortinet senior mobile researcher Axelle Apvrille took a closer look at AdThief. Turns out the software works on 15 different mobile adkits and using some clever code it changes the developer or affiliate ID so all ad revenue is redirected to the criminals and not the people it’s intended for. 8 of the adkits are Chinese, the other 7 are from various countries around the world but each one is hacked the same way and always has the same effect on the advert. Security experts and Apple themselves do advice not to jail-break their devices as it does increase the risk of picking up software like this massively, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the user.
The Chinese hacker, known as Rover12421 did contribute to the code, but denied saying he or she is behind the entire project
Thanks to Tweaktown for supplying us with this information.
Image courtesy of Tweaktown.
No they’re not awful but I can’t say the same for the company.