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Windows Malware Sneaks Into Apple's iOS App Store

This article is more than 10 years old.

For the first time since its incarnation, a piece of Windows malware has made its way into the App App Store. But there's no reason to panic.

The malware seems to have been downloaded as part of an app called "Instaquotes - Quotes Cards For Instagram". The malware for first bought to light by a user called deesto over on the Apple Support Communites forum.

The malware is identified as Worm.VB-900 by ClamAV, Worm:Win32/VB.CB by Microsoft and as Mal/CoiDung-A by Sophos.

CNET reports that Apple nuked the Instaquotes app from the iOS App Store on Tuesday within hours of discovering the malware.

According to MacRumors, the app debuted  in the App Store on 19 July and over the weekend its price had been slashed from $0.99 to free.

It is unknown at this present whether the malware was deliberately loaded into the app or whether it made its way there accidentally. Either way, it's impossible for the malware to run on a Windows PC without first being manually extracted from the iOS app package.

The malware is incapable of doing anything to iOS devices.

So, if you find it, just delete it and don't worry about it any further.

Earlier this month Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab discovered an app called “Find & Call,” available in both the Google Play (although only from the Russian version of the store) as well as the Apple App Store, that was secretly harvesting data from users’ address book and sending information to the developer’s server. This data was, in turn, used to spam users with SMS messages.