More than a quarter-million Apple users from 18 different countries had accounts stolen after they made themselves vulnerable by jailbreaking their devices, researchers announced today.
The theft represents the largest known theft of Apple accounts caused by malware, according to Palo Alto Networks, adding further caution to Apple users to avoid installing programs not meant for iPhones and iPads.
Photo: Palo Alto Networks
The term jailbreak refers to attempts to remove manufacturer restrictions on devices so that users can download apps not be approved by the providers. Eliminating these restrictions on Apple devices compromises security, paving the way for viruses or hacks from malicious software, known as malware.
In the case of the stolen accounts reported by Palo Alto Networks and Weiptech, the credentials were stolen through malware that originated from the popular jailbreak tool, Cydia. The thefts were discovered when researchers reverse-engineered the hack and attacked the control server where the data was stored, according to a report on the website The Next Web.
According to researchers, the malware, Key Raider, uploaded data to that control server that included logins, purchasing receipts and device IDs.
Palo Alto Networks said the stolen information can be used to purchases apps from Apple, hold iOS devices hostage for ransom or sell account usernames to spammers.
“Our primary suggestion for those who want to prevent KeyRaider and similar malware is to never jailbreak your iPhone or iPad,” said Claud Xiao, who authored the report for Palo Alto Networks.
Source: The Next Web
David Pierini is a former newspaper writer and long-time photographer. Considered a luddite by most of his friends, they did not believe him when he broke the news that he would be writing for a technology website. He is fascinated by human nature and would love to cultivate stories about the people driving the tech bus. Reach out to him at [email protected].
4 responses to “Some iPhone jailbreakers are in for a nasty surprise”
Apple’s been trying to protect people from this for a long time, but folks are so cynical they think it’s just “evil” control. Oh well, live and learn.
Jailbroken, since iPhone 1, Jailbroken today on 6+. 5s and 5. No problems. This is really about dumb people.
Just love all these rumours that people can keep writing about but no rumours about the prices of the updated iPhone. Lets hear rumours on that front
Articles written by fans if Apple lack so much objectivity… iPhone is not perfect as is just comming out of the box as he claims and there are many reasons to jailbreak the phone, installation of custom firmware is really common on many phones and multimedia devices, the risk comes when the firmware is developed by unscrupulous programmers who do it with the intention to exploit backdoors, android is as good as the firmware of Apple, there are many more programmers creating CFW and many more configurations of hardware so its more common to see bugs on the system but that doesn’t mean that android its inferior.