The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security has announced Chinese authorities have arrested and charged three individuals with developing and operating the Web sites responsible for the recent “WireLurker” malware attacks on Apple’s iOS systems.

The threat, which was found earlier this month, allowed hackers to install malware on iOS devices by way of vulnerabilities in Apple’s enterprise provisioning routines. These are intended to allow companies to distribute apps to managed iOS devices, but instead of using this to push legitimate software updates to employee phones, WireLurker was developed as malware for Mac OS systems that would detect and then push malicious apps to iOS devices.

This malware was estimated to be one of the largest attacks to hit OS X, where it was estimated that 467 apps were downloaded to over 350,000 Macs by the time it was found and revealed by security analysts at Palo Alto networks.

Following this finding, Apple swiftly revoked developer certificates for apps identified as being used for this malware scheme, and today SecurityWeek is reporting that Chinese authorities in collaboration with Chinese security company Qihoo 360, have identified three individuals behind the malware attack, and have arrested them.

This action brings relatively swift closure to this problem, and even though this may stem new WireLurker infections, many Mac systems remain infected by the WireLurker malware. If you are at all concerned about your Mac being affected by WireLurker, then you can use the instructions here to detect and remove WireLurker from your system.