More Than 75,000 Jailbroken iPhone and iPads Infected With AdThief Malware

You may be under the illusion that because you have an iPhone or iPad you are safe from malware. This could possibly be the fact if you kept your device as it was when you purchased it, but if you start to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, you open yourself up to malware threats. AdThief Malware was created by a Chinese hacker and was discovered back in March of this year, and it looks like it has been going on quite an infection spree. If you have a jailbroken iOS device, then you need to pay attention to the rest of this post.

Security researchers Axelle Apvrille has revealed that AdThief, or Spad as it is also known, has managed to steak advertising revenue from over 75,000 iOS devices. It has managed to hijack a massive number of ads, approximately 22 million, and this means that they have really reaped the rewards financially too.

AdThief malware gets installed as part of certain untrusted Cydia repos and packages, likely the pirated ones, and it disguises itself as a Cydia Substrate extension. Once it has been installed, it replaces legitimate affiliate codes from a range of ad networks with its own, meaning that all taps that generate revenue, do so for the person behind the malware.

AdThief is a technical and malicious piece of code that hijacks revenue from 15 different adkits. It is built on top of the Cydia Substrate platform, available for jailbroken devices. This provides this malware with an easy way to modify advertisement SDKS.

What is important to remember is that this malware cannot infect devices that are not jailbroken, and those who do jailbreak their devices, should always be aware of any potential security and privacy implications that can arise as a result. Jailbreaking may bring you a lot of benefits including customization, tweaks and themes, but if you aren't careful and ensure that you only install tweaks from legitimate sources, you can compromise your device. If you have a jailbroken device, we recommend that you avoid tweaks that don't come from a trusted Cydia repository.

More Than 75,000 Jailbroken iPhone and iPads Infected With AdThief Malware