8 ms·
First case of malware in the Apple App Store.
- Smudge 14y agoIt's a good thing Facebook overwrote my entire contacts list with useless data, so apps like this can't affect me anymore.
- freehunter 14y agoUnless Facebook overwrote their phone numbers with 1-800-[friends name], this is a pointless argument and completely out of context. Facebook's issue was email. This is phone number SMS.
- Smudge 14y ago(Yes, I am aware. It was a joke. iOS has many issues with its contact list.)
- ja27 14y agoFirst known case.
- eps 14y agoFirst publicized case perhaps?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- adjwilli 14y agoThis article is total linkbait. They redefine "malware" to create a sensationalized headline. The article never mentions what the consumer facing features were suppose to be. It could have had a legitimate use, but also this privacy violating code. This is more properly an app that violates user privacy - which is not something new or particularly newsworthy - and not malware.
- eridius 14y agoHow does the server send SMS as if it came from the user? I've never heard of that ability before.
- cjg_ 14y agoSpoofing sender in SMS is easy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing
- RedwoodCity 14y agoThat was a really interesting analysis. A malware scam with a global reach. A phone designed in California, malware written in Russia or former soviet Republic, and Banking routed through Singapore. I gained a wealth of knowledge.
- joshlegs 14y agoReminds me of this gem from a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4156438 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4156438 I guess that's just one more reason to keep their marketing the new way.
- younata 14y agoAs far as malware goes, this isn't really that bad. (EDIT: it doesn't e.g. steal your credit card info [unless you keep that info in your contacts list]) It's simply an app that uploads your address book to a remote server. Up until recently, it was considered industry standard to do that. The only thing this app does different is that the server then sends SMS messages to the numbers it uploads from your address book. All this really is showing is that Apple should've made iOS from the beginning ask the user for permission before allowing an app to access the address book. After iOS 6, this app won't do anything.
- ghshephard 14y agoThe problem is - this is a contact list manager - so you would expect to give permission to this app to access your contact list. Ideally apple has contact information for this developer, and, presuming the Developer violated some license with regards to what they can do with user data, Apple can now take legal steps against this developer.
- eps 14y agoDo you, realistically speking, see Apple doing that? Me neither. They should really just sandbox the apps and put a proper permission granting system in place.
- ghshephard 14y agoBut this is a contact list management application. It requires access to the address book. Any sandbox that would have been created would have allowed the application access to the contacts, even with the most stringent permissions.
- lotu 14y agoWhy not Apple has plenty of lawyers and wants to disuade other people from trying the same thing?
- techinsidr 14y agoI agree -- Sneaky, but probably not as malicious as most headlines are making it. http://www.securityweek.com/sneaky-ios-malware-surfaces-app-store-says-kaspersky http://www.securityweek.com/sneaky-ios-malware-surfaces-app-...
- Splines 14y agoIt also shows problems with SMS in general: - How can a 3rd party send a message that appears to be from the user that ran the program? - Why can't someone have the same control over SMS as they can over email? (Filter based on trust, spam control) I'd also be interested to know what sort of filtering is done by mobile operators. I'm guessing there is some, (based off of pacaro's comment), but do these features differ by operator? Is there a standard?
- cdcarter 14y ago"- How can a 3rd party send a message that appears to be from the user that ran the program?" Unfortunately this is just an issue of cid spoofing. Nothing new and carriers still let it happen.
- scott_s 14y agoI thought it was a measured analysis, and it was nice to see disassembled and decompiled code. But the last bit is strange: 'Creating' phrases with hexadecimal numbers is not new. And in many cases such things have been noticed in different malicious applications. Many applications do that for sanity checks, I don't think it's any kind of indication of malware. It's a common technique to have some "magic number" that you can recognize to make it less likely that a transfer of data has some kind of corruption [1]. The benefit of using a number like 0xdeadbeef over, say, 0x1857de89 is that you can tell at a glance if the first one is correct. [1] Yes, one should use error codes and do this the real way. Not everyone does.
- praptak 14y ago> benefit of using a number like 0xdeadbeef over, say, 0x1857de89 I remember a blog post of someone who ran the whole dictionary through 'l337sp34k' filter. The best word they found was 0xdefeca7e.
- duskwuff 14y agoThere's some other fun spellings using "8" = "ate", like 0xdefec8ed and 0x8badf00d.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- 0xABADC0DA 14y agoBest hexword ---^ - Easy to remember and type - Not leet speak - Reminds you to keep ego in check
- j_s 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Magic_debug_values http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Magi...
- jrmg 14y agoI'd like to see a translation of the app store description.
- aen1 14y agoThis is not the first case by a long shot.