If you suspect that your iPhone may have been infected with a virus, there are some steps that you can take in order to remove it. Samani considers the most serious threat that iPhones do face to be fake apps - apps that pose as other, legitimate apps for nefarious purposes - and phishing attacks, which trick users into giving various account information to bad actors. Samani says that he frequently sees examples of malware that does infect iOS devices, often delivered via email or SMS messages. Yet however small, the threat of iPhone viruses is still very real.

Note: The number of potential viruses that could affect an iOS-based device is minuscule compared to the tens if not hundreds of thousands of known viruses for PCs. The so-called walled garden, another term for Apple's approach to requiring third-party apps and services to be specifically approved and vetted through the App Store, effectively prevents malware from taking control of the entire phone. In contrast, Apple device owners update their operating system software far more frequently, and Apple doesn't have to deal with the same amount of OS fragmentation found within the Android ecosystem. He also says that attacks on iPhones are much rarer than attacks on Android devices.Īndroids have a much more fertile environment for malware because there are so many versions of the OS in the wild, and it's the carriers - not Google - that get to decide when or if the operating system is patched with security updates on specific model phones. Raj Samani, Chief Scientist for McAfee, agrees. In short, the answer is yes, but there is very little risk.Īccording to Okta's Vice President of Cybersecurity Strategy Marc Rogers, attacks on iPhones are 'pretty rare and tend to be isolated to high value attacks, such as those carried out on behalf of nation states - for example the pegasus malware created by NSO Group.'

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