Developers Posted Piracy App On Apple App Store

Apple’s App Store is more restrictive than any other, but applications that can be used to commit copyright violations are strictly prohibited everywhere. Nevertheless, this dubious “feat” succeeded once again.

Attentive observers, more specifically the Apple-centric 9to5Mac, recently noticed an app called Zoshy +. It climbed the charts in the puzzle category and if you looked at the screenshots, you couldn’t see anything wrong with it, because Zoshy + was a supposed Sudoku app.

But when you started the now removed application, a completely different “pleasure” was revealed, namely an app with which you can illegally stream thousands of films and series for free, including content from Apple TV+. The videos actually started, but the users had to endure numerous advertisements before the desired content started.

Apple was swindled

The person in charge called “Ha Miller”, who only had a single app in the App Store adopted a trick: When Zoshy + was started for the first time, it actually showed a Sudoku interface, but after a short time the interface became server-side exchanged and showed a UI with various black copies. This was probably the case with the certification of the app, so the Apple employees only got to see the harmless puzzle fun.

Apple of course knows that this scam exists and has also developed strategies against it – but they are not 100 percent “waterproof”. Apple calls such applications “Jekyll” apps, which is, of course, a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

In the case of Zoshy +, the developer managed to go undetected in the App Store for three weeks. The app was only removed after the 9to5Mac report, which begs the question of how many (less popular) Jekyll apps are undetected in the App Store.