Apple This

According to recent reports, a small number of iCloud accounts that were supposedly protected by secure, randomly generated passwords have been hacked, raising suspicion by users that a security breach has happened within Apple’s servers.

Details of the hack come from a thread found on the Apple Support Communities forum. Users of iCloud have since voiced their concern that their accounts have been compromised with one affected customers saying that their Me.com email address was hacked and began sending out spam emails to everybody in the user’s contacts.

According to the user, “I never use my @me email for anything, and I guarantee someone didn’t break into the account by guessing my password (or brute force methods) – it’s a pseudoly randomly generated string of 15 numbers, letters (upper and lower case) and symbols (I worked in IT for many years and am perhaps overzealous about password security, which makes memorization a real pain). I’m worried that Apple’s iCloud servers themselves got hacked, as I see there are a few other people on the forums who are reporting that their account was used for spam in the last few hours.”

An additional thread was also started by a separate user experiencing the same problems. Both threads have relatively low numbers of replies and reader views, which suggests that any coordinated hack of iCloud accounts wasn’t widespread. Those that do believe they were hacked say that they found a series of spam emails in their Sent folders for their iCloud accounts.

The silver lining to this is that the spam emails only went out to contacts synced with the users’ iCloud account. Any contacts from Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird did not receive any spam. In addition to that, most of the users on the thread stated that they do not use their iCloud or MobileMe email addresses. They found out that their accounts had been compromised when they received messages from friends notifying them of the spam.

If you think you have been compromised, contact Apple Support. One user has already done so and stated that Apple Support helped them remove all of their contacts from their iCloud. That seems to be the only response so far as Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged the problem or delivered a viable solution.

Source: Apple Insider – Users raise questions about Apple’s security after iCloud hacks

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And the hacking continues! These past few months have seemed like a field day for hackers who have felt the need to infiltrate nearly every aspect of the technological world. Their most recent target? None other than big bad Apple. Chalk up another worldwide corporation being affected by the hackers.

AntiSec, a fusion network of “hacktivists” Anonymous and the recently defunct LulzSec, sent out a tweet last Sunday that the group broke into an Apple server and collected more than 26 administrative passwords and user names. The group also claimed that they were able to access Apple’s systems via a security flaw in third-party software.

The tweet read as follows, “Apple could be target, too. But don’t worry, we are busy elsewhere.”

AntiSec was created when LulzSec and Anonymous hackers vowed to unite against major financial institutions and governments across the globe. The resulting group, AntiSec, has been active ever since, striking out at various online bastions with distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Apple, naturally, declined to comment on any breach of security, but it stands to reason that the company cannot be happy about becoming the most recent victim of hackers just like so many companies and governments before them over the past several months.

With regard to other cases, Apple seems to have gotten off relatively easy. Other attacks were much worse, like the one on Citigroup that caused a $2.7 million breach. The bank is now frantically scrambling to restore customer confidence in the wake of this attack. Another big attack was the one on Sony and the PlayStation 3. Sony has just recently finished restoring its systems after an 11-week service outage.

Anonymous stands out amongst political lines with its history of online activism against “restrictions on free speech” as the group puts it. If Anonymous is the head for politically motivated attacks, then the former LulzSec represents the side of hackers that do it “for the lulz”. LulzSec’s colorful narratives and snarky illustrations were the main trademarks of the group until it disbanded last week.

Compared to all the other attacks making headlines, this one for Apple seems like small news. However, on the internet nobody is safe, at least not 100%, and Apple may come under further attacks unless it provides a serious update to its security systems.

Source: Mobiledia – Hackers Hit Apple

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