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Apple’s spotless record tarnished by App Store’s first malicious spam app [updated]

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:29PM EST
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Apple’s spotless record of keeping the App Store clear of malicious spam apps has been tarnished. Researchers at Kaspersky have discovered an app called “Find and Call” in Apple’s iOS App Store and the Google Play marketplace, Forbes noted on Thursday. The malicious app masquerades as a tool for simplifying contact lists but it instead uploads a user’s full contact list to a remote server and proceeds to send SMS and email spam to every person in the list. “It’s not for the first time when we see incidents related to user’s personal data and its leakage,” Kaspersky’s Denis Maslennikov wrote in a post on the company’s blog. “It’s for the first time when we have a confirmed case of malicious usage of such data… Yes, these pieces of malware are not that ‘cybercriminalistic’. But malware is malware and in this case it steals user’s phone book and uses it for SMS spam.”

UPDATE: Apple has pulled “Find and Call” from the App Store.

[Via Forbes]

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Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.