Pornographic Images popping up on iPhone

I'm not sure the source of the images (and it's more disconcerting that it shows up on sites like msn.com and twitter.com), but one thing you could try is to enable web content filtering on iOS 7.

Launch Settings, tap "General", scroll down and tap "Restrictions", enter your passcode, then scroll down and tap "Websites", then tap "Limit adult content".

In theory this will prevent the images from being loaded, but the mechanism that makes the images appear on those sites may still occur.

Other things you could try:

1. Enter Private Browsing mode if it's not enabled (or turn off Private Browsing mode if it's enabled) to see if that stops the images.

2. Tap "Clear Cookies and Data" (and possibly "Clear History") from Settings > Safari to see if that stops them.

Hope that helps.

Bottom line is that a site visited previously on the phone has installed malware. Clearing the cache and cookies, etc will not get rid of it. You need to wipe the phone completely and rebuild from scratch i.e. don't restore from backup or iCloud.

There's no other way to get rid of it (yet). You then need to be very selective about the sites you visit on that phone.

So, what we know: you and a friend have had this happen on three different devices, on three different sites, while on two different networks (provided by two different companies).

This doesn't necessarily rule out the network, though. First, are you sure that you weren't both using cellular data with the same provider at the time that it happened? If you both were using cellular data from the same cellular provider, their network could have been compromised.

Second, is it possbile that those two ISPs are using the same domain name servers for some reason? To check the latter, go to Settings -> Wi-Fi, tap the 'i' icon next to the selected network and look at the DNS setting. If that number starts with 10.0 or 192.168, then the DNS setting needs to be looked up on the wireless router. Find those numbers instead. Compare... if you and your friend happen to both be using the same DNS server, a poisoned DNS server could be the issue.

Also, I'm assuming these are home or work networks, and not free wifi from some coffee shop or somewhere. Such places have been known to inject code for their own ads into the HTML for every page downloaded. If you are both using such a network, that could be the issue.

Alternately, this could be a problem with hacking of the sites involved, or an ad server used by all the sites involved. This is less likely to be the issue in your case, since it happened once on Twitter. Unless you had another page with ads loaded on another tab, and that page cycled to an ad that caused that pop-up.

I also notice that you haven't said whether or not these devices are jailbroken. If they are, anything's possible. If you didn't jailbreak it, might someone you know have done so as a prank? Search your iPhone for the Cydia app... if it's there, someone has jailbroken your phone.

Red_Sqwiwul wrote:

Is this a virus? Is there anything that I can do to prevent it happening? Why is there no antivirus for the iphone / ipad?

Because there aren't any viruses on an 'i' device Red_Sqwiwul.

To answer your question, I never heard anyone mention that random images on a non-jailbroken phone have ever occured. But since Safari is a web browser, you can browse to nearly anything. As for Twitter, that would depend on the twitter application that you are using to access Twitter.

And Apple takes a pretty strict view on disallowing questionable material inside of applications. —e.g Safari has nothing of this nature that is built-in.

In addition to what has already been sugested, double click your home button, and when the active applications appear, remove all of them (swipe up in iOS7.) This will officially quit them and if you have a program that is running that you're not aware of it will be terminated this way. However, if your image is simply a web site that you're browsing too, then that is a separate issue.

-Alan

Bottom line is that a site visited previously on the phone has installed malware.

No, that is not the case. Unless the iPhone in question has been jailbroken (in which case, anything is possible and the phone really should be wiped clean), there's no known malware capable of infecting it. So this isn't malware, and wiping the phone would be unnecessary, and wouldn't solve the problem anyway.

I've never seen that sort of thing personally, but when you are browsing the web, stuff like that can very easily happen. Sounds like a pretty basic image pop-up. Normally, that sort of thing is generated by some component of that site (perhaps an advertisement) that has been hacked. However, you mention three different sites, and it's unlikely that all three have all been hacked in the same way, to display ***********.

Does this happen when browsing on any other device? Does it happen when your iPhone is on any other networks?

Also, are you positive that this image is displayed within Safari? It's not someone sending you an image through Messages as a joke, is it?

You're very sure of yourself considering you have never seen this problem 🙂

I have seen this problem. You can be browsing a legitimate site when suddenly, without any iteraction from the user, a new page loads over the top of your existing page (not in a new tab). Clearing the cache, etc doesn't help as this problem will continue to occur. The only known solution is to wipe the phone.

You said that there's "no known malware" on the iPhone - so does that rule out unknown malware? What makes you so sure?

I have seen similar issues, just not that particular case (involving pornographic imagery).

As for what makes me sure this isn't malware, that would be an understanding of the security technologies involved with iOS. The application sandboxing and restrictions against running code that wasn't downloaded from the App Store mean that there has yet to be any real malware for iOS (not counting jailbroken devices).

While I would never say it's impossible for there to be new, undiscovered malware out there, neither is it something likely enough to be worth considering when troubleshooting.

Well you have a much better understanding of iOS than me 🙂

I can only base my assumption on what I do know from my experience. I have worked in support and this is what I've found:

• Safari is being influenced by activity that doesn't come from the user.
• This activity continues even after clearing Safari's cache.
• This activity does not continue after you wipe the device.

If I were dealing with a Windows machine this would point to virus activity (rootkits aside).

I've seen this activity reported before at various other forums but it's never really come to prominence. Again, from my experience this strange activity only started happening immediately after visiting adult sites, which may explain why it's not reported as much. Perhaps it's not just adult sites - there's likely a variety of sites out there injecting something into the phone. Our phones are one of the most popular methods of browsing the net these days so it's in someones interest to develop targetted malware for them.

Tapping "Clear History" and then Clear Cookies and Data" from Settings > Safari should address the issue.

You may also want to verify that the "Block Cookies" setting is set to "From third parties and advertisers". (Do not set it to "Always" or many web sites will stop working, especially when you try to log in.)

It sounds like the adult web site stored tracking information on your device (either as cookies or cached data), and then advertising networks read that tracking information and presented you with **** content via ads included in the page.

Enabling Private Browsing mode before going to adult web sites will cause the tracking data to be stored only temporarily, and then turning off Private Browsing mode will basically remove any tracking data stored while in that mode.

ddkilzer wrote:

Tapping "Clear History" and then Clear Cookies and Data" from Settings > Safari should address the issue.

You may also want to verify that the "Block Cookies" setting is set to "From third parties and advertisers". (Do not set it to "Always" or many web sites will stop working, especially when you try to log in.)

Clearing the cache and cookies doesn't resolve this issue. My cookie settings were configured as you've specified and it still happened.

ddkilzer wrote:

Enabling Private Browsing mode before going to adult web sites will cause the tracking data to be stored only temporarily, and then turning off Private Browsing mode will basically remove any tracking data stored while in that mode.

I also only ever use Private Browsing by default. This does not prevent the problem.

Red_Sqwiwul wrote:

Looking at other forums a factory reset does not solve the problem.

The question is did the user revisit the sites that caused it in the first place? If they did then the problem would re-appear.

In my experience I saw the problem after visiting adult sites. After wiping the iPhone and no longer visiting adult sites I never saw the problem again.

Mark my words, the only resolution is to wipe the phone and never visit those gambling sites again - keep that for your desktop/laptop. Until Apple admits that it's malware and provides a way to remove it, you haven't really got many other options.

A web site can auto refresh and during that refresh cause another site to load. Sites that do such activity have been compromised or you are visiting less than honorable sites. The phone is not infected, the phone is not compromised, it is the web site you are visiting. Don't visit that website again.

Until Apple admits that it's malware and provides a way to remove it, you haven't really got many other options.

Why would they admit to that when it isn't true? When your sandwich goes missing while camping in the woods, it's not Bigfoot that took it. The same holds true with malware on iOS. If countless security researchers haven't turned up any malware for iOS yet, do you really think it's not only out there, but as easy as you claim to find?