Security News > 2020 > August > Popular iOS SDK Accused of Spying on Billions of Users and Committing Ad Fraud
Although the names of the compromised apps using the SDK have not been disclosed, the code was uncovered in the iOS version of the Mintegral SDK, with the first version of the malicious SDK dating back to July 17, 2019.
Hijack User Ad Clicks Stating that the SDK contains several anti-debug protection intending to hide the actual behavior of the application, Snyk uncovered evidence that Mintegral SDK not only intercepts all the ad clicks within an app but also use this information to fraudulently attribute the click to its ad network even in cases where a competing ad network has served the ad. It's worth noting that apps that feature in-app ads include SDKs from multiple ad networks with ad mediators' help.
Collecting More Data Than Necessary for Ad Click Attribution Even more concerningly, the SDK contains functions that are designed to snoop on all communication from the impacted apps, with the scope of data being collected far more than what's required for legitimate click attribution.
While there's no way to know for users to know if they're using an app that embeds the Mintegral SDK, it's imperative that third-party developers review their apps and remove the SDK to plug the data leak.
"To clarify some details about how our SDK works, our SDK collects information through a publicly available OS-level Apple API. We use this data to select the most relevant advertisement when our ad network is called to fill an ad request. This is a standard industry technique for the purpose of identifying the most appropriate ad for a user."