17 Apps From Apple App Store Infect with Clicker Trojan Malware

Researchers discovered 17 malicious apps in the Apple app store that delivers the clicker trojan malware into iPhone users and generate ad revenue.

Attacker abuse iphone users by carrying out ad fraud-related tasks in the background and click the ads or link that continuously open the web page without any user interaction.

DigitalMunition reported several incidents related to adware infection in the last 2 years. it’s a clear indication that cybercriminals are continues evolving with new techniques to trick the smartphone users and generate millions of dollar revenue.

Similarly in August, we have reported the same Clicker Trojan activities that installed on nearly 100 million Android phones via Google play store apps such as audio players, barcode scanners, and other software. 

Recently researchers uncovered that even one of the top paid Apple’s Mac store App “Adware Doctor” spying the Mac users and steal the Users browsers history from the Safari browser. 

Clicker trojan is basically classified as malware due to its nature that performs ad-fraud by making frequent connections to ad networks or malicious websites and generates revenue.

17 Apps were classified under this Clicker Trojan malware, and the apps belong to different categories including productivity, platform utilities, and travel.

Using these Clicker trojan infected apps, attackers also be used to draining the budget of a competitor by artificially inflating the balance owed to the ad network.

These apps were published by the same developer AppAspect Technologies Pvt. Ltd., an India-based app development company, and this clicker trojan implanted apps are published from different countries.

 C&C Server Communication

These uncovered apps communicate with the attacker via the C&C server using a strong encryption cipher and receive the command to trigger a targeted advertising platform.

Also, it remotely loads the website and performs the reconfiguration process to fraudulently subscribe and expensive content services.

According to wandera report, Command & Control enables bad apps to bypass security checks because it activates a communication channel directly with the attacker that is not within Apple’s view. C&C channels can be used to distribute ads, commands, and even payloads.

Researchers also discovered that the company behind this app development leverage the same Command and Control server used in the previous clicker trojan incident that affected the 100 million Android users.

These apps were reported to Apple security Team, and all apps were removed for having code that allows for the artificial click-through of ads, and also apple promised to improve their detection tool to prevent the users in the future from these types of activities.

iPhone users are strongly recommended to remove the above-listed apps from your phone and also carefully download the apps in the future for your smartphone by measuring the risk level.

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