When you choose an iPhone over the best Android phone, you may be doing so because of iMessage, FaceTime and all of Apple's other apps and features. But security and privacy are also among the main reasons many people choose an iPhone over an Android smartphone.

As the popularity of the best iPhones and best MacBooks have grown in recent years, so have the targets of hackers. iPhones do not have as much malware as Android, but they do have one major threat: spyware.

From Pegasus to Predator, there is plenty of spyware designed to target the iPhone. Because Apple smartphones are used by everyone from celebrities to politicians, there is all sorts of valuable financial and personal data that can be stolen by hackers and other cybercriminals.

Apple has added new features such as a lockdown mode to make the devices more secure, but it was quite difficult to determine if an iPhone was infected with spyware. Fortunately, Kaspersky security researchers have developed a new way to determine if spyware is currently present on an iPhone.

As reported by BleepingComputer, security researchers have now learned that traces of well-known spyware like Pegasus, Reign, and Predator on an infected iPhone can be We have learned that traces of well-known spyware like Pegasus, Reign, and Predator on an infected iPhone can be discovered by checking the device's Shutdown.log file. This file records and saves data each time the iPhone is rebooted. [However, since checking the iPhone's Shutdown.log file is a tedious task, Kaspersky has released several Python scripts to automate the analysis process. At the same time, it is much easier to examine the Shutdown.log file compared to other methods, such as examining encrypted iOS backups or network traffic.

For this purpose, Kaspersky has published three Python scripts on GitHub that the company calls iShutdown. It has also published usage and example output for these scripts.

Admittedly, this method is not for everyone, but if you have experience with Python, iOS, terminal output, and malware indicators, you may be able to use iShutdown to diagnose your iPhone for signs of spyware or malware. However, this method will fail if the infected iPhone was not rebooted the same day it was infected.

Still, this is quite a breakthrough and should make it easier for security researchers to determine when a high-profile target has spyware installed on their iPhone.

Even if you don't have the necessary skills or experience to run these iShutdown scripts yourself, there are many things you can do to keep your iPhone safe from hackers.

For starters, you want to download and install the latest updates as soon as they are available from Apple. iPhone manufacturers often patch zero-day vulnerabilities and other bugs when they release updates. However, waiting to install these updates puts your iPhone and yourself at risk.

Due to Apple's own limitations, there is no iOS equivalent to the best Android antivirus app, but one of the best Mac antivirus software solutions can keep both your iPhone and iPad safe from malware. With Intego Mac Internet Security X9 or Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9, simply connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac with a USB cable and it will scan it for malware.

In addition to installing updates and scanning for malware, you also want to avoid opening messages from unknown senders or downloading attachments, both in email and messaging apps. iPhone to malware and spyware. While it is difficult to infect, hackers are very resourceful and as soon as a bug is fixed, they are looking for new bugs to exploit in their attacks.

It remains to be seen if Kaspersky will further develop the iShutdown script, but at this time it can be downloaded for free and used to find traces of spyware on infected iPhones if you have the necessary skills.