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Malware Protection

Hello there,

First of all I wish to express my gratitude to Apple and everyone involved for creating these beautiful devices. I absolutely love everything I buy from this company even if I haven’t used any device until very recent. So thank you deeply for existing!

As for the reason I’m writing? Well, I’ve been subjected to a malware infestation a week ago after I opened an unfortunate image on Google Images and found myself with Calendar events looking like the ones in the image attached to this ticket.

I’ve immediately changed passwords on most applications I had installed on my phone, deleted my banking applications and reset my iPhone, removing all entries in the Calendar.

My concern is, how can I prevent this from happening again in the future and how can I be safe to reinstall my banking applications back? Since I have postponed that until I feel it’s safe. Is there any way to track if my phone might still get infected? Without installing snd paying for a fully fletched antivirus. Something directly integrated in the Apple environment.

Kind regards,

Miro.

Posted on Aug 30, 2021 3:17 PM

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Answer 1

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stedman1

Community+ 2024

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260,572 points

Aug 30, 2021 3:25 PM in response to miromargineanu

For future reference, the steps required to get rid of the bogus calendar entries can be found below.

If running iOS 13 or earlier versions, check: Settings - Passwords & Accounts - Accounts - Any rogue entries here? If so, delete the rogue account.

If running iOS 14, check: Settings - Calendar - Accounts - Any rogue entries here? If so, delete the rogue account.

The Apple support article is below.

Remove calendar spam

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Answer 2

Aug 30, 2021 3:37 PM in response to miromargineanu

You did not need to change passwords.

There was no malware here.

This was not caused by opening a Google image.

This was caused by a website that offered a calendar subscription (event notifications) to a user, or an email message that offered a calendar subscription, and that offer of a subscribed calendar was accepted by the user.

Removing the subscribed calendar (as described above) would have removed the calendar alerts, and resolved this in its entirety.

Some related reading on security, and how we ourselves (and less our devices) are getting targeted:

Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

From that link:

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