Some shady tweaks that you installed on their jailbroken devices are looking to steal your iCloud login credentials, a report said.
The iCloud account details, including email addresses and passwords, of nearly 220,000 jailbreak users have been breached, an online Chinese vulnerability-reporting platform WooYun reported.
WooYun is an information security platform where researchers report vulnerabilities and vendors give their feedbacks. The security breach, according to the website, was a result of 'backdoor privacy attack' caused by the installation of a malicious jailbreak tweak. It appears that hackers are using a variety of "built-in backdoors" that could be numerous of malicious jailbreak tweaks in an effort to acquire victim's iCloud account information.
Once installed, these malicious tweaks transferred the iCloud login details of the jailbreak users to an unknown remote server. So far, it is unclear that who is behind the attack, and what are their intentions to do with the stolen iCloud accounts. But, the report states that WooYun has notified the appropriate vendors – apparently Apple – about the issue and are awaiting processing.
Below you can see the (slightly) translated version of the report:
Considering just one jailbreak tweak, 220,000 seems to be a huge number. Though it is believed that a number of malicious jailbreak tweaks have been used by the criminals, out of which many are posted as free versions of popular paid tweaks.
Who is Affected?
The security flaw has nothing to do with Apple's security and affects only iOS users who have attempted jailbreak on their devices. However, with such a large number of compromised Cloud accounts, it appears that such an attack could be the result of a more organized method, which could be due to a pre-installed backdoor.
As pointed out by Reddit user ZippyDan, the Chinese market traders often sell iPhones and iOS devices that are pre-jailbroken. Also, many of these devices may have been passed on with the shady tweaks already installed.
How to Protect Yourself?
It's unlikely to say not to jailbreak your device, as we can take some necessary steps to tighten up our device security. Here are some steps that you should implement to help protect yourself:
- Enable 2 Factor Authentication for your iCloud Account
- Do not add shady third-party repositories to Cydia
- Do not install jailbreak tweaks from unknown and untrusted sources
- Do not pirate tweaks or apps
If you have already enabled two-step authentication, it will prevent someone else from accessing your iCloud account even if they have your email address and password.
