The tech giant had to remove over 300 infected applications from its app store after some Chinese apps leaked users’ personal details to hackers using a tainted version of Apple’s developer tools.

Apple confirmed that it had removed the apps reported by several cybersecurity companies as carrying a malware dubbed “XcodeGhost”. This is not a common thing for AppStore – actually, it’s the first reported case of such a large numbers of malware apps making their way to the store. Earlier, only five malicious apps had ever been detected in Apple store.

The company explained that the hackers embedded the malicious code in the apps by convincing developers to use a counterfeit version of Apple’s software. Apple has removed the apps created with that tainted software and is currently working with the developers to make sure they’re using original tools to rebuild all those apps.

The hacked version of software became very popular in China, where widespread Internet censorship slowdowns connections to overseas servers, forcing Chinese users to seek an alternative domestic source for large downloads. And they found the allegedly original iOS developing tools on the local resource. XcodeGhost inserted the privacy-busting code into the apps.

Since the malware had limited functionality, there have been no known examples of data theft or other harm thus far, but the incident showed that the AppStore could be compromised if hackers infected machines of software developers. Now other hackers may copy that approach.

In the meantime, Apple didn’t clarify how many infected apps it had uncovered or how many users had downloaded them.