{"id":13656,"date":"2016-02-22T13:21:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T18:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=13656"},"modified":"2019-07-30T09:54:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:54:10","slug":"how-zerghelper-evaded-app-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/22\/how-zerghelper-evaded-app-review\/","title":{"rendered":"How ZergHelper Evaded App Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/2016\/02\/pirated-ios-app-stores-client-successfully-evaded-apple-ios-code-review\/\">Claud Xiao<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Javi\/status\/701594779444903936\">Javier Soto<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com\/2016\/02\/pirated-ios-app-stores-client-successfully-evaded-apple-ios-code-review\/\">\n<p>ZergHelper appears to have gotten by Apple&rsquo;s app review process by performing different behaviors for users from different physical locations on earth. For users outside of China, it would act as what it claimed: an English studying app. However, when accessing the app from China, its real features would appear.<\/p>\n<p>The app was made available in the App Store on October 30, 2015. However, nobody appeared to have noticed ZergHelper&rsquo;s hidden functionality until February 19, 2016, when a user <a href=\"http:\/\/v2ex.com\/t\/257767\">created a post in V2EX<\/a> (a Chinese developer forum) to discuss it. We shared our findings with Apple on February 19, and Apple removed the app from the App Store later that day.<\/p>\n<p>ZergHelper&rsquo;s main functionality appeared to be to provide another App Store that includes pirated and cracked iOS apps and games. The app was developed by a company in China that named its main product &ldquo;XY Helper&rdquo;. ZergHelper was the non-jailbroken and &ldquo;official App Store&rdquo; version of this product.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Claud Xiao (via Javier Soto): ZergHelper appears to have gotten by Apple&rsquo;s app review process by performing different behaviors for users from different physical locations on earth. For users outside of China, it would act as what it claimed: an English studying app. However, when accessing the app from China, its real features would appear. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-07-30T13:54:12Z","apple_news_api_id":"a0a18771-9c01-403f-b314-e64e1a7b967b","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-07-30T13:54:13Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AoKGHcZwBQD-zFOZOGnuWew","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1846,91,31,1137,48],"class_list":["post-13656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-app-review","tag-appstore","tag-ios","tag-ios-9","tag-security"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13657,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13656\/revisions\/13657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}