How a Mobile App Firm Found the XcodeGhost In the Machine (computerworld.com)

SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes: A Denver-based mobile app development company, Possible Mobile, had a tough time figuring out why Apple recently rejected its app from the App Store. After a lot of head scratching, it eventually found the XcodeGhost malware hidden in an unlikely place — a third-party framework that it had wrapped into its own app. Their experience shows that the efforts of malware writers can have far-ranging effects on the mobile app component supply chain.

Comments

And that's

[Anonymous Coward]

Why I use make and Code::Blocks on OSX (And Linux, And BSD... Still use VS on Windows though. Gotta love me some Intellisense.)

The big problem with xcode? Gotta have an Apple account...

Re:Only a fool would add libraries without knowing

[dgatwood]

App developers have only limited time to devote to such things. Sure, when we integrate a brand new framework, we dig in a bit to see if there's anything suspicious, but apps have to routinely update these third-party frameworks to the latest versions to fix bugs and crashes. It just isn't practical for developers to give that level of scrutiny to every minor update. If we did, we'd never have time to do anything but update third-party frameworks.

This is, BTW, why framework developers should not be in the business of supplying precompiled binaries. The framework devs are causing added security risk for app developers, and also exposing themselves to significant liability if they make a mistake like this. And when Apple has to make a compiler change for something like app slicing or whatever, closed-source frameworks cause huge overhead for developers that wouldn't exist if all the code were being compiled by the actual developer. And when there are bugs (which there always are), closed-source frameworks make working around them a big headache. So they really are a nightmare for us.

And trust me when I say that there's nothing in your ad or analytics framework that is so amazing that it qualifies as a competitive advantage. If you think otherwise, you're only kidding yourselves. Just open the source already.

But I digress.