Mysterious malware steals Apple credentials from jailbroken iOS devices

[Starbuck]

Some iOS users found a malicious library of unknown origin on their jailbroken devices

 

A malware campaign of yet-to-be-determined origin is infecting jailbroken iPhones and iPads to steal Apple account credentials from SSL encrypted traffic.

 

The threat was discovered after some users reported on Reddit that they experienced crashes in some applications as a result of a mysterious MobileSubstrate add-on called Unflod.

 

MobileSubstrate, now called Cydia Substrate, is a framework for jailbroken devices that allows developers to create modifications for iOS.

 

"This 'substrate' allows you to extend and to modify the behaviour of iOS in ways that are deliberately prohibited by Apple on unjailbroken devices, such as by hooking, or intercepting, system functions to make them do new and interesting (though sadly also perhaps dangerous) things," wrote Paul Ducklin, the head of technology for Asia-Pacific at antivirus vendor Sophos, in a blog post Monday.

 

It appears that someone created a dynamic library for Cydia Substrate that hooks the legitimate iOS SSLWrite function to read data before it's encrypted and sent over a secure SSL connection. The rogue library is called Unflod.dylib, but instances with the name framework.dylib have also been observed.

 

"It has been suggested that the choice of name might have something to do with the existence of a real tweak called Unfold," researchers from SektionEins, a security consultancy company based in Germany, said in a blog post discussing the threat. "The choice of name might therefore just be an attempt to hide in plain sight."

 

After hooking the SSLWrite function, the malware monitors traffic for authentication requests with Apple's services. It then extracts Apple IDs and passwords from the data and sends them to one of two hardcoded IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.

 

 

 

Source:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2014/042214-mysterious-malware-steals-apple-credentials-280896.html?source=nww_rss