Apple has owned up to a rare incursion of malicious software into its App Store, forcing it to pull some of the most widely used mobile apps in China from the service.
Late on Sunday in California, the iPhone and iPad maker confirmed reports by security researchers who had warned that a swath of popular Chinese apps had been created using developer tools that were infected with the malware, resulting in the compromised apps.
“Hundreds of millions” of users of the popular Chinese apps were at risk of having their personal data exposed, including people who use Tencent’s WeChat mobile messaging service and ride-hailing app Didi Kuaidi, according to Palo Alto Networks, a US cyber security company.
Apple said it had removed the infected apps, which had been created with what it said was a fake version of its software for app developers, known as Xcode.
It did not explain how developers of a large number of China’s most widely used mobile services had all been infected with the same piece o
