Of course, Apple devices and ecosystems are considered safe in malware attacks, but shocking reports have come out.
It has been revealed that more than 128 million iOS users have been the victim of ‘XcodeGhost’ malware, which first appeared in the year 2015.
This was attributed to injecting malware into some iPhone and iPad apps uploaded to the App Store.
Malware-related information has surfaced due to an internal email leak.
Thousands of apps downloaded.
It has been revealed that 12.8 lakh iOS users had downloaded more than 2,500 such apps, which were infected with malware with a fake copy of Xcode.
According to the motherboard report, these 2,500 infected apps were downloaded more than 20.3 million times from the App Store.
An employer said that 55 per cent of the malware victims are from China and Chinese users are responsible for 66 per cent of the downloads.
How the users became the victim of this malware?
The report said that many developers downloaded Infected Xcode because Apple’s servers were slow.
These developers discovered other alternative download links, which had to bear the brunt.
Popular apps and games like ‘Angry Birds 2’ also became victims of this malware.
The emails showed that the company also did several internal discussions to warn users and developers of malware.
Apple warns developers
The California tech company asked developers to recompile their apps with the Genuine version of Xcode as soon as this issue came to light.
Apple has improved both the security associated with the Xcode installation process and the malware scanning done when submitting apps to the App Store.
Apple has brought stricter rules for developers than ever before and emphasises the privacy of users.