Category: Iphone

Have you noticed your iPhone behaving a little strangely recently? Maybe you’ve been bombarded by unusual ads or your battery has been hitting 0% much more quickly than normal. If you’ve got your suspicions that your iPhone has a malware infection, keep on reading to learn how to know for sure!

Step #1 — Check for high data usage

One particularly big sign of a malware infection is if your iPhone is using much more data than normal. Follow the instructions below to check:

1. Go to either Settings > Cellular or Settings > Mobile Data (depending on which version of iOS you have, it will be different).
2. You will then be able to check exactly how much data you’ve used in the current period. If it is significantly higher than you’re used to, search through the list of apps and look for any that you don’t recognize or remember installing. If any of them are using up a lot of data, you should strongly consider deleting them because they could be malicious.

Step #2 — Check for battery-hogging apps 

Some forms of malware can run in the background without you even being aware of it, consuming huge amounts of your iPhone’s resources and having a significant impact on how long its battery lasts. As a result, similar to an increase in data usage, a sudden increase in battery usage is another red flag that indicates that your iPhone may have a problem. Here’s how you can check:

1. Navigate to Settings and select Battery.
2. Choose either Last 24 hours or Last 10 Days.
3. You can now see every app’s battery usage during the selected time period. Just like checking for high data usage, if you see any unusual apps that are using up a lot of battery, you should delete them.

Step #3 — Check for strange apps

Malware comes in many different varieties. While it is true that many consume a lot of battery and data, it is not the case for all malicious apps. Because of this, you also need to simply scan through every app installed on your iPhone and look for ones you don’t recognize.

This step may take a while, especially if you’ve installed lots of them, but scan through all your apps and search for ones that you don’t recognize. Every time you see an unfamiliar one, you should remove it.

Step #4 — Constantly being bothered by pop-ups?

If you’re always being bombarded by ads every time you surf the web on your iPhone, it’s a very strong sign that it has been infected by adware, which is a particular form of malware. Although it is generally considered one of the less dangerous types of malware, it can still be very annoying. If you’re suffering from this issue, but you were unable to find any malicious apps while following the previous steps, you should move on to the next step.

Step #5 — Run a malware scan

If you were unsuccessful in detecting any malware-infected apps while following the instructions in the previous steps and your iPhone is still behaving unusually, you need to run a malware scan — Trend Micro Mobile Security  works perfectly for this!

Trend Micro Mobile Security can protect you against malicious apps, ransomware, dangerous websites, unsafe Wi-Fi networks, and more. Ridding your iPhone of malware simply couldn’t be any easier! Click the button below to download.Get Mobile Security

Some of Trend Micro Mobile Security ’s awesome features include:

• Surf anywhere —Prevent mobile apps from loading dangerous and risky websites when you browse.
• Stop threats —Rely on the cloud-based Smart Protection Network™ and Mobile App Reputation technology to stop threats before they can reach you.
• Avoid online scams and fraud —Flag malicious phishing emails and scam websites.
• Improve performance — Take advantage of optimization features to make your mobile devices work better.
  
  Source :
  https://news.trendmicro.com/2022/01/26/how-to-detect-malware-on-iphone-5-steps/

One of the first malware samples tailored to run natively on Apple’s M1 chips has been discovered, suggesting a new development that indicates that bad actors have begun adapting malicious software to target the company’s latest generation of Macs powered by its own processors.

While the transition to Apple silicon has necessitated developers to build new versions of their apps to ensure better performance and compatibility, malware authors are now undertaking similar steps to build malware that are capable of executing natively on Apple’s new M1 systems, according to macOS Security researcher Patrick Wardle.

Wardle detailed a Safari adware extension called GoSearch22 that was originally written to run on Intel x86 chips but has since been ported to run on ARM-based M1 chips. The rogue extension, which is a variant of the Pirrit advertising malware, was first seen in the wild on November 23, 2020, according to a sample uploaded to VirusTotal on December 27.

“Today we confirmed that malicious adversaries are indeed crafting multi-architecture applications, so that their code will natively run on M1 systems,” said Wardle in a write-up published yesterday. “The malicious GoSearch22 application may be the first example of such natively M1 compatible code.”

While M1 Macs can run x86 software with the help of a dynamic binary translator called Rosetta, the benefits of native support mean not only efficiency improvements but also the increased likelihood of staying under the radar without attracting any unwanted attention.

First documented in 2016, Pirrit is a persistent Mac adware family notorious for pushing intrusive and deceptive advertisements to users that, when clicked, downloads and installs unwanted apps that come with information gathering features.

For its part, the heavily obfuscated GoSearch22 adware disguises itself as a legitimate Safari browser extension when in fact, it collects browsing data and serves a large number of ads such as banners and popups, including some that link to dubious websites to distribute additional malware.

Wardle said the extension was signed with an Apple Developer ID “hongsheng_yan” in November to further conceal its malicious content, but it has since been revoked, meaning the application will no longer run on macOS unless attackers re-sign it with another certificate.

Although the development highlights how malware continues to evolve in direct response to both hardware changes, Wardle warned that “(static) analysis tools or antivirus engines may struggle with arm64 binaries,” with detections from industry-leading security software dropping by 15% when compared to the Intel x86_64 version.

GoSearch22’s malware capabilities may not be entirely new or dangerous, but that’s beside the point. If anything, the emergence of new M1-compatible malware signals this is just a start, and more variants are likely to crop up in the future.

Source :
https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/first-malware-designed-for-apple-m1.html