Cyber-threats against Apple devices on the rise: Symantec research

Mumbai: According to a research conducted by cyber-security firm Symantec, the rising popularity of Apple devices has attracted substantial attention from hackers; and also threats affecting these devices have increased significantly.

Over the years, Apple has successfully attracted more users with back-to-back successful releases that have led to more number of people buying the company’s products. Apple now accounts for 13.5 per cent of global smartphone shipments and 7.5 per cent of global PC shipments, said market intelligence firm IDC.  

However, citing the unmatched success of Apple across the globe, hackers have been increasingly targeting devices manufactured by the Cupertino-based company.

According to the author of the report and Symantec’s senior information developer Dick O’Brien, “A rising number of threat actors have begun developing malware designed to infect devices running Mac OS X or iOS.”

The report further highlights an increase in the number of iOS malware threats with seven new threats discovered in 2015, up from the previous high of three in 2014.

The number of new Mac OS X threats emerging is increasing year-on-year, rising by 15 per cent in 2014. This was followed by an increase of 44 per cent in 2013 and an increase of 29 per cent in 2012.

(Source: Symantec research paper)

The number of unique MAC OS X computers infected with malware in the first nine months of 2015 alone was seven times higher than in all of 2014.

(Source: Symantec Research Paper)

O’Brien said, “A significant amount of this spike has been accounted for by grayware, such as adware, potentially unwanted or misleading applications.”

“While these grayware infections accounted for much of the surge in infections between June 2014 and March 2015, recent months have seen a significant uptick in infections involving other forms of malware,” he added.

Jailbreaking can be harmful

Adding to the brunt is the increased likeliness of users to jailbreak (Root) their devices. Even though jailbreaking has certain advantages, the disadvantages out-weigh the benefits by a huge margin.

(Source: Symantec Research Paper)

Hacking a stock iOS system is very hard, as the attacker needs to find a way to install malware on the device. On most occasions, threats are installed when the user connects a device to an infected desktop.

However, compared to a stock iOS, Jailbroken devices present greater opportunities for hackers to infiltrate a device.

(Source: Symantec Reserach paper)

Interestingly, out of the 13 iOS threats recognized by Symantec to date, nine can seriously infect jailbroken devices.

A list of all iOS threats from 2009 till date (Source: Symantec Reserach Paper) 

These threats span from ordinary cyber crime gangs branching out to Apple platforms, to high-level attack groups like the Butterfly corporate espionage team that infected OS X computers in targeted organizations, or the Operation Pawnstorm APT group creating malware capable of infecting iOS devices.

Threat recognition research vital

Even though the number of threats are less in comparison to Android devices, a large figure of new OS X and iOS threats discovered annually has been trending upwards over the past five years.

At one point of time between 2011 and 2014, the amount of vulnerabilities affecting iOS exceeded Google’s Android. As a counter measure, security researchers have started seeking new vulnerabilities in Apple software and have uncovered a number of high-profile flaws in the last year.

(Source: Symantec Reserach Paper)

Zero-day brokers have begun offering bounties for Apple vulnerabilities, with US$1 million paid recently for a jailbreak of iOS 9.1. This will surely help researchers and developers in quick identification and eradication of the threats.

Considering this drift, Apple developers have to put in more efforts to identify potential threats and eradicate them for good. Additionally, Apple users need to be care and should be aware of common threats, and how to prevent them.