Your iPhone may not be as safe from hacking as previously thought, security experts say

Hackers have been able to remotely break into and spy on Apple's iPhones, previously considered one of the world's most secure mobile devices, researchers revealed this week. 

Hacking Team has gained followers and detractors alike for selling bespoke spying and surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. 

Those spying tools have now been released into the public domain. 

"The apps are fully developed, an attacker only needs to configure command and control server URLs to deploy an attack," said FireEye senior director for mobile development Raymond Wei. 

On an iPhone, the spying app uses a bug in the device's code to replace an existing app with a version modified to monitor user behaviour and send information to the remote attacker.

"[The] app can gather sensitive information, including contact information, calendar reminders and events, photos, precise GPS coordinates, and send to the remote server," Fireye said in a statement.