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OSX, iPhone OS, Wind Xp whci one is the culprit of security vulnerability?

T

txr0ckabilly

macrumors 6502
Original poster
i know the title is a bit off, but i didn't know how to word it right.

i'm new to OSX so i'm not real sure what i'm asking, so i'll just lay it out and maybe someone can help me.

over the last few days, my mobileme, gmail, facebook, (pretty much anything i have a password for) has constantly been fouling up.

every time i try to log in to any of these services they all tell me my password has been changed. so i went through the steps on each and everyone of them and made new passwords. i have to update the passwords on all three devices (mac, pc, iphone). i basically use the same password for everything, which scares me because so much stuff has been compromised. my first instinct is to jump up and say it's the PC and a virus is affecting it.

-but-

my wife's iphone is starting to "forget" passwords. her iphone is synced to the mac at home and has never touched my PC at work. i've scanned the pc for viruses and spyware- nothing found. being new to OSX (first MAC bought 2 weeks ago), i was wondering is there some kind of spyware detector made for it that i can use to scan my system?

-in the meantime-

i'm doing a factory restore on the iphone to make sure it's not infected or at least immunize it against threats. (are there any threats to the iphone OS?)
has anyone seen anything like this before? any suggestions?

if this is posted in the wrong forum, let me know....
 
txr0ckabilly said:
i know the title is a bit off, but i didn't know how to word it right.

i'm new to OSX so i'm not real sure what i'm asking, so i'll just lay it out and maybe someone can help me.

over the last few days, my mobileme, gmail, facebook, (pretty much anything i have a password for) has constantly been fouling up.

...

if this is posted in the wrong forum, let me know....
Click to expand...
Billy, I think that you may be mistaken. Those sites may tell you that you have the wrong username or password. They cannot tell you that your password has changed. If you can't login, then there is no way for the site to know if your password has changed or not because there is no way for the site to know if you have the correct username or not. All it knows is that someone tried to login with wrong credentials.

My suggestion to you is to be a little more careful about how you type in your username and password.
 
txr0ckabilly said:
every time i try to log in to any of these services they all tell me my password has been changed. so i went through the steps on each and everyone of them and made new passwords.
Click to expand...

Didn't you have to enter the old password to change it?

i have to update the passwords on all three devices (mac, pc, iphone). i basically use the same password for everything, which scares me because so much stuff has been compromised. my first instinct is to jump up and say it's the PC and a virus is affecting it.
Click to expand...

Is your password easy to guess or brute force? Is it a well-formed word? It's possible your PC could have been compromised but you said you scanned it and it came up clean. It's more likely that your account(s) just fell victim to a dictionary attack, and that once the attacker was in on a set of credentials they just tried the same password in the other services you mentioned.
 
I said I was an Osx Newb, not a newb when it comes to computers.....

My passwords are not real words and contain letters, numbers & special charactars. They also have a mixture of capitals and lowercase letters. They are strong passwords.

I've never been a victim of phishing. I've made it a rule, that if my password doesn't work the first time, I check the URL of the site I'm at and I never click on emails about accounts unless I'm sure of the sender.

Also, these passwords were stored passwords that I didn't have to enter. Like my mail accounts. I was just getting notifications that my password was wrong whenever mail was tryng to check accounts and in iPhoto where I had an album linked to FB.

All common denominators, I felt, pointed to the Iphone or the Mac. My PC at work does not sync with FB in any way.

So.....

I wiped my phone yesterday afternoon and restored it to factory settings. I did not restore from a backup. I set up all accounts manually. It's been twelve hours and there have been no password resets. Where in the previous 48 hours I was getting wrong passwords every 5 minutes or so.
 
Also I might mention that my iPhone was jailbroken at one time, but I restored it about 3 or 4 months ago from backup.
 
txr0ckabilly said:
I've never been a victim of phishing. I've made it a rule, that if my password doesn't work the first time, I check the URL of the site I'm at...
Click to expand...

Seems like this one should be the other way around ;-)

Also, these passwords were stored passwords that I didn't have to enter.
Click to expand...

Ok, if we've more or less ruled out phishing or a password attack then it seems this is the next most likely avenue. Who has access to your Mac and to your iPhone?
 
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