Google's security experts have found evidence of prolonged hack attempts against the iPhone users for two years. The attack was carried out through websites that discreetly installed malware to collect contacts, images and other data. These sites were visited thousands of times a week.
The malware had access to a huge amount of data - contacts, photos and location data. Within 60 seconds, the software is able to forward information to external servers.
Google informed Apple about the problem on February 1st.
"There was no target discrimination; simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant. We estimate that these sites receive thousands of visitors per week," Ian Beer, from Google's Project Zero, wrote in a blog post published Thursday, Vice reported.