China’s “Great Firewall” may have been partially to blame for the very first significant assault on Apple Inc’s App Store, but specialists also point the finger at lax security procedures of some big name Chinese technology companies and how Apple itself supports programmers in its second largest market.

A malicious software, dubbed XcodeGhost, strike on hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Apple iOS programs, including products from some of the most successful technology firms in China used by hundreds of huge numbers of individuals.

The US internet security firm that seen the issue, Palo Alto Networks, says the attacker could send commands to infected apparatus that may be utilized run phishing attacks to steal private information and, in theory.

The event was a setback to the reputations of some of China’s technology winners, in what some program manufacturers viewed as collateral damage from the tight controls Beijing locations on the web within its edges, and poor infrastructure linking to the external world, that make international downloads patchy and slow.

Businesses influenced by the XcodeGhost strike contained Tencent Holdings Ltd, among the planet ‘s largest web companies, and the largest rival of Uber Technologies Inc, Didi Kuaidi, which finished a $3 billion private fundraising round.

The WeChat of Tencent, whose is just one of the most famous programs in China, and Didi Kuaidi declined to comment, beyond saying that they’d fixed the problem and users’ information hadn’t been undermined.

“Tremendous error” The App Store had formerly been almost totally free of malware, which is uncertain how the modified code resisted Apple’s notoriously demanding program acceptance procedure, in which programmers frequently wait a week for reviews of upgrades to their programs.

“These reviews are renowned for how special Apple is,” said Robert Walker, creator of cellular telephone relationship program Cuddli who worked for Microsoft in China.

But this was overlooked by them repeatedly through heaps of distinct programs. A huge error on their part.”

An Apple spokeswoman didn’t answer to questions about the program acceptance procedure and why unofficial Xcode was being used by programmers in China, however a senior executive said on Tuesday the business would allow it to be simpler for Chinese programmers to download its software.

Promotion leader Phil Schiller told Chinese news site Sina.com it’d offer national downloadings within China of its programmer applications.

The planet ‘s second-biggest market has net speeds that are typical more than three times slower than those in America, according to online content delivery company Akamai’s latest State of the web report.

Slow internet connections, along with government censorship, have for ages been a top concern among foreign companies in China.

China is a tremendous marketplace for Apple, which brought in around $13 billion in Greater China in the past fiscal quarter and in January 2014 said Chinese programmers had found 130,000 programs for its cellular devices and personal computers.

The size of that contribution to the bottom line of the technology giant has fueled resentment among a number of the Chinese companies who are making those programs, who complain of dearth of support.

It could have prevented the issue if Apple had supplied a local, fast source for the official Xcode applications earlier, said software developer Feng Dahui.

“Apple does not care enough about Chinese programmers, nor does it value Chinese users,” said Feng.

But regardless of the challenges confronting them in China, many program programmers and security experts said the technology businesses themselves bear the most responsibility for the strike, which has influenced users and mainly Chinese businesses up to now.

Eswar Priyadarshan, CEO of Tasteful, which creates food and dietary programs, noted that he will not understand any U.S. programmers who use third party Xcode.