Yikes! What You Must Know About the Massive iPhone User Data Breach
Our smartphones are our life. And are becoming more time consuming by the day c/o apps like Snapchat (PS, FOLLOW US ;)
Security company Palo Alto Networks, along with Chinese tech group WeipTech, recently uncovered a massive operating system hack affecting jailbroken iPhones that PAN calls “the largest known Apple account theft caused by malware.”
Luckily for those of you that haven’t gone the jail-breaking route with your iOS device, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But the ones who have reworked their phone’s operating system to gain access to parts of your phone’s file systems that are typically restricted with its standard system, you may want to be shaking in your boots.
The malware, named KeyRaider, has already attacked more than 225,000 jailbroken iPhones, sharing users’ iTunes/App Store info — like usernames, passwords, individual iPhone unique IDs and info about iPhone owners’ App Store purchases — while simultaneously preventing owners from recovering their iPhones altogether. Womp, womp, womp.
Along with stealing all of this private info, the hackers are sharing it with the Internet, allowing anyone to use it for iTunes/App Store purchases of their own.
Basically, jailbroken iPhones can be beneficial for personalization, but it comes with a risk. So if you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to a jailbroken phone, we’d advise just staying content with the standard iOS and call it a day.
Do you have a jailbroken iPhone? Are you concerned about it getting hacked? Let us know in the comments.
(Photo via Palo Alto Networks)