Jailbroken Apple iOS Devices Hit by 'Panda' Malware
This baby panda is anything but cute.
"Unflod Baby Panda" is the name given to a newly discovered malware campaign that targets jailbroken iOS devices, whose owners have disabled Apple's built-in limitations and security measures in order to get more control over their iPhones, iPads and iPods.
MORE: 10 Pros and Cons of Jailbreaking Your iPhone or iPad
Members of the online forum Reddit are credited with first discovering Unflod on Apr. 17, when members of the "r/jailbreak" subreddit tried to help a user whose jailbroken iPhone was behaving strangely. The Reddit users eventually determined that the iPhone in question had a new type of malware on it.
The Reddit users isolated the malware and made its code public, which allowed German security firm SektionEins to take a closer look.
SektionEins researchers found that Unflod was snooping on infected devices' outbound SSL-encrypted traffic and scooping up any Apple ID information it found. That information was then transmitted in unencrypted plain text to U.S.-based servers apparently rented by Chinese customers.
It's still not clear how the Unflod malware gets onto jailbroken iOS devices, or if the malware could perform other actions, such as possibly putting other malicious files onto the infected device. SektionEins warned that deleting the malware and changing the user's Apple ID might not be enough to remove it.
"We therefore believe that the only safe way of removal is a full restore, which means the removal and loss of the jailbreak," SektionEins wrote in its in-depth analysis. Infected users would have to re-jailbreak their phones after performing the full restoration.
Because Unflod Baby Panda only affects jailbroken iOS devices, Apple's mobile platform retains its spotless record of being technically malware-free — apart from a couple of proof-of-concept attacks devised by security researchers — since the operating system's 2007 debut.
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