Chinese security researchers have found that Apple's App Store in the country is currently home to several malware-infected apps, a revelation that has been subsequently verified by US-based Palo Alto Networks.

Researchers say hackers infected some versions of development tool Xcode hosted on third-party websites - for those who aren't in the know, the tool, which is also directly available from Apple for free, is used by developers to create iOS and OS X apps. These malicious versions have now been labeled as XcodeGhost.

Examples of infected apps - which are more than 20 in number, and collect information like phone's name, UUID, language and country, current time. and network type when launched - include NetEase Cloud Music which has nearly 500 ratings, with an average of 4.5 stars.

“Some of them are very popular and have tens of millions of installations,” according to a researcher with Palo Alto Networks.

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