{"id":23811,"date":"2018-09-10T10:16:08","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T14:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=23811"},"modified":"2019-11-15T06:33:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T11:33:46","slug":"ios-security-explainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/23811\/","title":{"rendered":"Why there’s no antivirus for iOS"},"content":{"rendered":"

It might seem strange that Kaspersky Lab doesn\u2019t offer an antivirus app for iOS, but there\u2019s a good reason: Apple doesn\u2019t allow any proper antivirus apps into the App Store, saying<\/a> \u201cApple designed the iOS platform with security at its core\u201d and that the operating system does not need an antivirus utility.<\/p>\n

That sounds rather arrogant, but it\u2019s not marketing nonsense: Apple iOS is indeed designed to be very secure. iOS apps are executed in their own sandboxes<\/a> \u2014 secure environments that seclude the apps, keeping them away from other apps\u2019 data, not to mention from tampering with the operating system\u2019s files. Under iOS, a wanna-be-malicious app won\u2019t be able to steal or compromise anything; it won\u2019t be permitted outside its own sandbox, where only its own data is stored and processed. That\u2019s really helpful in terms of security.<\/p>\n

In addition to that security measure, Apple restricts installation on iOS devices to only those apps from the official App Store (unless somebody \u2014 be it your company admins or a malefactor \u2014 has an enterprise developer account that lets them use Mobile Device Management [MDM] to install apps from third-party sources). The company has really tight control over what is allowed into its store, reviewing the code of all apps before approving anything. Connecting the dots, that means that someone would have to develop a malicious app for iOS and then get it through official review before it had a chance of making it onto an iOS device.<\/p>\n

Of course, the above is true for nonjailbroken iOS devices only \u2014 but the majority of iPhones and iPads aren\u2019t jailbroken, mostly because modern versions of iOS are very secure, and there is no known way to jailbreak them.<\/p>\n

Those very same limitations mean antivirus apps can\u2019t actually be created for iOS: To work at all, any antivirus solution has to be able to watch what other apps are doing and intervene if an app\u2019s behavior is suspicious. You can\u2019t do that in a sandbox.<\/p>\n

What about the security apps in the App Store?<\/h3>\n

Search the App Store and you will find things called Internet security apps. These apps have two things in common: They are not antivirus apps, and they tend to get bashed in user reviews for that reason. As we already said: A proper antivirus solution cannot run in iOS. These apps are not antivirus utilities, even if they have antivirus engines embedded, they are not allowed to scan other apps and their data. That point typically appears in reviews by knowledgeable users, who bash them for not being actual antivirus apps.<\/p>\n

What do those apps really do? Are they fake? Well, no \u2014 and they may contain useful security features such as antiphishing and antitracking modules, VPNs, parental control utilities, password managers, ad blockers, antitheft solutions, or any combination of those.<\/p>\n

All of those features are helpful \u2014 and related to security and privacy \u2014 but calling the combination an Internet security suite is confusing and misleading for users. It\u2019s an unspoken rule that antivirus should be a key component of any Internet security app. That\u2019s the very reason Kaspersky Internet Security for iOS simply doesn\u2019t exist: We wouldn\u2019t mislead our users. But all the aforementioned features are actually useful, and that\u2019s why we have something else for Apple\u2019s mobile operating system.<\/p>\n

How to stay safe in iOS<\/h3>\n

Apple really did engineer iOS with security at its core, but that\u2019s not enough to call it an absolutely secure operating system. Every once in a while, cybercriminals find new ways to exploit vulnerabilities in iOS or fool the Apple personnel who review apps.<\/p>\n

Those ways have included poisoning the Xcode development kit<\/a> so that innocent-looking apps created with it became malicious, or having an app check for location<\/a> and not run the malicious code in the US, letting the attackers slip in under Apple\u2019s radar and right into the App Store.<\/p>\n

So, having an iOS antivirus app sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately none exists and none can be created as things stand. Luckily, malware for iOS is very rare at the moment, so your odds of encountering any are low. (Again, that is true unless you install an MDM profile<\/a>, because after that, your device can be fully and remotely controlled from the server of the organization that issued the profile. So for nonenterprise users, avoiding MDM certificates is the main security principle under iOS.)<\/p>\n

No malware, no problems, right?<\/h3>\n

Unfortunately, malware is not the only threat out there. Let\u2019s not forget that other threats are just as real for iOS users as they are for everyone else. Those threats include phishing, spam, network data interception, and so on and so forth, not to mention privacy threats. That\u2019s why every iOS user needs to know cybersecurity basics (we have a post on that<\/a>). We also recommend iOS users in particular use security services such as Kaspersky Security Cloud.<\/p>\n

Despite not having an antivirus engine, Kaspersky Security Cloud for iOS provides some very useful security enhancements such as a built-in VPN that offers to activate itself when it finds the connection is not secure, notifications about relevant security incidents, and a tool that checks for weak system settings. We round those out with our Password Manager and, in the Family version, Kaspersky Safe Kids, our advanced parental control tool. That should keep you on the safe side.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why doesn\u2019t Kaspersky Lab have an antivirus app for iOS \u2014 and what are all those other Internet security suites for Apple mobile devices?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":23812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[1251,109,215,1250,100,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-23811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-products","8":"category-tips","9":"tag-antivirus","10":"tag-apps","11":"tag-internet-security","12":"tag-ios","13":"tag-ipad","14":"tag-iphone"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/23811\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/14269\/"},{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/11965\/"},{"hreflang":"ar","url":"https:\/\/me.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/5926\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/16249\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/14425\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/13391\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/16912\/"},{"hreflang":"it","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.it\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/16269\/"},{"hreflang":"ru","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.ru\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/21265\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/5269\/"},{"hreflang":"fr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.fr\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/10925\/"},{"hreflang":"pt-br","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.br\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/10900\/"},{"hreflang":"pl","url":"https:\/\/plblog.kaspersky.com\/ios-security-explainer\/9725\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/17627\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/ios-security-explainer\/21510\/"},{"hreflang":"nl","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.nl\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/23780\/"},{"hreflang":"ru-kz","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.kz\/ios-security-explainer\/17311\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/21132\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/ios-security-explainer\/21138\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/ios\/","name":"iOS"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23811"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29634,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23811\/revisions\/29634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}