New System and Security app can tell you if your iPhone has been secretly hacked

Have you ever wondered if someone might have hacked your iPhone without you knowing? Created in response to the rise in government spyware, a new $1 application has been developed to help users find out if someone has sneakily hacked and jailbroken their device.

The app, called System and Security Info, was developed by German security firm SektionEins, whose R&D team is headed by well-known iPhone security researcher Stefan Esser.

Unlike their Android counterparts, iPhone devices require a "jailbreak" to get through Apple's near-impossible security system and modify the device to run software that isn't officially approved by the smartphone giant. According to Esser, however, hiding a jailbreak is as easy as deleting a single file.

"The biggest motivation behind [this app] is that these companies like FinFisher or HackingTeam that are selling iOS spy software to government and others, they usually require [their clients] to only use jailbroken phones," Esser told Gizmodo. "So the idea behind that is whoever is trying to spy on someone needs to get physical access to the device, jailbreak it, and then they can run the spying tools from HackingTeam or FinFisher."

Besides checking whether your iPhone has been jailbroken or not, it also checks to make sure no malware has been installed either. It also scans and detects a number of security anomalies such as non-Apple daemons, unexpected injected libraries and more. The app's jailbreak tab shows users a breakdown of files to flag you if your phone has been jailbroken.

"[We] wanted to provide the public with a low cost solution that allows to find out if someone used one of the public jailbreak or a customized version to hack and backdoor your device," the developers wrote in a blog post.

System and Security Info is available to purchase in the App Store for $0.99 (£0.69).