Apple removes malware detected at iOS App Store

Software giant Apple, in a first instance of its kind, has removed a piece of malware that managed to get into the company''s four-year-old iOS App Store.

The app, named Find and Call, sneaked its way into both Apple''s App Store as well as Google Play, but the two digital stores removed the Trojan horse after being detected by the Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cyber security company, which wrote a report on the app.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Find and Call, which was passed off as being just another address book app, asks users to register their email and phone number, after which the app would offer to find friends from users'' phone books, but it would actually grab that data and feed it to a remote server the Kaspersky Lab''s report said.

Afterwards, the malware would spam users'' contacts with text messages that appeared to be sent from them, prompting them to also download the app.

"The ''from'' field contains the user's cellphone number. In other words, people will receive an SMS spam message from a trusted source," Kaspersky cited.

Both Apple and Google removed the app from their respective digital market places.

The Kaspersky report also pointed out that while the malware is not unheard of in the Google Play store, it is highly believed to be a first for Apple.