The Apple App Store and Google Playstore afford developers an outlet for their respective app creations but there are some rules. Both Apple and Google have a review process apps must go through before being approved. These review processes are in place to protect users from malware or viruses that could end up in an application thus infecting a wide swath of users. But sometimes these review processes don’t initially work as Apple has discovered 17 apps that actually contain malware in them.
All 17 apps were created by the same developer but each were intended for different tasks such as finding restaurants, video compressing, internet radio and more. The malware found in these applications were discovered by mobile security Wandera, who stated the apps did what they were intended to do while committing fraud in the background.
The clicker trojan module discovered in this group of applications is designed to carry out ad fraud-related tasks in the background, such as continuously opening web pages or clicking links without any user interaction.
The objective of most clicker trojans is to generate revenue for the attacker on a pay-per-click basis by inflating website traffic. They can also be used to drain the budget of a competitor by artificially inflating the balance owed to the ad network
Wandera also provided some insight into how the apps got past Apple’s review process. There was no malicious code found within the apps but they were getting instructions from a remote server. While no harm was done to those that did have the apps installed, mobile data was being used and possibly slowing down the phone and causing the battery to drain faster.
What do you readers think about Apple catching these malware filled apps? Should their review process look through the app as a whole and not just the code? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, or MeWe.
[button link=”https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/25/malware-iphone-apps/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: 9to5mac[/button]Last Updated on February 3, 2021.
