cross pond high tech

Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of non-jailbroken devices are believed infected after a Trojan compiler malware struck in China.

It involves a maliciously modified version of the XCode integrated development environment (IDE) -- a nasty trick that places it among a family of malware known as "compiler malware".  While not a wholly new strategy, this is the first time that we've seen proof of such a strategy being used to target the iOS crowd.  It's also remarkable in its ability not only to threaten users of non-jailbroken devices but every version of iOS, as well.

And by the looks of it, it's a very succesful indeed as it in effect transforms Apple's walled garden and singular source -- an approach that for so long helped to secure Apple's userbase -- into a digital weapon to attack users.  After all developers trust XCode -- they have to because they have no other choice.  But if they get their copy of Apple's software from a third party (as many even in the U.S. do) they may find their apps secretly Trojanized.

And to make matters worst, in this case Apple is the Trojan dealer, not some sketchy piracy site.  iOS users trust the App Store -- because they have to.  Officially, Apple contends any other source of apps for the iPhone is illegal.  But in this recent breach Apple was very cleverly -- and some would say alarmingly easily -- tricked into distributing malware to 25,000+ iPhone owners.