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Hackers Remotely Locking Some Macs and iOS Devices in Australia for Ransom

nsayer said:
So, everybody is piling on to this guy, but I would like to point out that although Australia is a very large area, it has a population only slightly larger than New York (the State). Perhaps that, combined with the general difficulty with ransom schemes in actually collecting the money in a way completely impossible to trace, might be what he was driving at.
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There's no way around it. The statement was, to put it as kindly as possible, not the smartest thing to appear on the internet. The population is irrelevant in the context of his statement.

"... Australia is relatively small. Just drive over to his house." - this doesn't jibe with your supposition.

"... might be what he was driving at." - I see what you did there.
 
Apple needs to step up the game on security, they take ages to fix security issues, unless it is used for a jailbreak. They really need to speed up the response to security issues, OS X is not that safe.

Their software division seems lost lately: buggy software, no testing and (useful) updates as rare as solar eclipses.
 
mw360 said:
What about a phishing app on iOS? Possibly only available on the Australian App store. My devices throw up so many random 'enter your iCloud password' dialogs without giving any reason or explanation, that I'm starting to think its ripe for exploitation.
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Agreed. The frequent 'enter your iCloud password' dialogs are a bad idea.
 
viizi said:
it's alright, hackers are usually very negative people which will in turn affect their health they will die off soon enough.
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And since they're living in their parent's basements, and don't have girlfriends, they don't procreate, thus not producing more little hackers, so we should be alright then….. :D

Disclaimer: Post not intended to trivialize the very serious problem of hacking.
 
Ayyeee... I think I'll disable iCloud features for a while until there's an update on this issue.
 
declandio said:
There should also be a fine for presumptuous posts made by idiots who think they're somehow superior to people they know nothing about.
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Hey, in no time at all both naivete and pompousness would be making the US hundreds of billions of dollars.... national deficit? What national deficit :)
 
abhibeckert said:
Again, let me reiterate.

My friend's password was not weak, it cannot have been cracked unless it was stored as plain text somewhere. Apple does not store or transmit plain text passwords and the password was not used anywhere else.

Security questions were not used, emails and logs of this are created and my friend only received emails about find my iPhone and spoke to Apple several times over 9 hours to resolve the issue - they would have told her if the security questions had been used.


My friend was not a naive user. She's a colleague of mine and we are a company that builds and supports secure online services, she knows what the common attack possibilities are because she sees customers of ours hacked regularly as part of her job.

I think it is highly unlikely the user or the password was attacked. Somebody got access to some kind of database inside Apple's Australia division. We'll probably never find out.
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Maybe someone working (or with access) at your corporation or an Australian backbone is the hacker. Is there such think as a local Australian iCloud database? I believe it's all part of a whole, not a segmented cloud in that sense.
Maybe someone who actually knows about it could enlighten us.
In the meantime, if your friend could put together a list of those who got hacked and try to find a common ground between them, the mystery may be solved.

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blackburn said:
Apple needs to step up the game on security, they take ages to fix security issues, unless it is used for a jailbreak. They really need to speed up the response to security issues, OS X is not that safe.

Their software division seems lost lately: buggy software, no testing and (useful) updates as rare as solar eclipses.
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Apple, please fix the users, if you know how...
 
Arndroid said:
The guy puts his name right in the hack. Australia is relatively small. Just drive over to his house.
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Hahaha. Fail.

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Xenomorph said:
What a dumb thing to say. Just because some kids used their passwords on multiple sites and got hacked, you are proud of not using industry-leading protection and services for your device?
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Wow! I want to be just like you! I want to be able to do root cause analysis on security breaches immediately after they are announced in the media and without access to the affected systems.

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Anonymous Freak said:
Considering over 90% of the population lives in an area the size of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S., it's not that far-fetched... (Still, not nearly as compact as the person you were replying to thought, though...)
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The person did not say "Australia on average has a very low population density". The person did not say "The vast majority of Australians live within 100kms of the east coast". They said Australia is small. It is not.

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Arndroid said:
That this guy lives in Russia complicates things. Most people in Australia live a modest distance apart to some places.
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What are you even talking about? The three largest cities in Australia are Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Both Melbourne and Brisbane are a similar distance from Sydney (900kms, 10 hours drive).

From the eastern most point of Sydney to the western most post is easily 1.5-2 hours drive. Same with north to south.

Unless your definition of a short distance apart vastly differs from mine, I have no idea of what you're talking about (let alone your uncorrected blanket claim that "Australia is small").
 
That is why I always use a Windows Phone for work. Nobody will EVER hack into windows phone or get into MS servers.
 
Ddyracer said:
Hmm this makes Mr. Schiller look a little dumb. Maybe he should focus less on android faults and more on OSX/iOS vulnerabilities :)

Too bad, used to like him.

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This is NOT an iOS/OSX vulnerability. This is a hacker who has obtained the Apple ID password from another site and is logging into their accounts. Apple ID accounts are secure, the ones who are vulnerable are the ones who use the same password on every site and one of those has became compromised.
 
Arndroid said:
The guy puts his name right in the hack. Australia is relatively small. Just drive over to his house.
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Wanna know why the rest of the world laughs at Americans? This is why:rolleyes:

My god your comment just makes me feel sad about your ignorance.

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rmatthewware said:
I'll see you in the gas chamber, then.

Seriously, though, hackers, along with persons who create viruses and malware should be given high penalties. This crap shouldn't exist.
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There is a massive difference between murdering someone and holding their devices for ransom.

Maybe if this was a mass murderer I would agree with you, but for hacking? Laughable.


I sincerely hope you never consider getting into politics.
 
This is probably related to increasing reports, that a Game Center screen pops up in a few games, and requests you to enter your itunes password. It may be that this process has been compromised and by entering your password you are actually giving it away to a hacker. Can some of the affected users comment on this? Did a Game Center screen pop up before they were affected? Did they enter their password?
 
tajec812 said:
This is NOT an iOS/OSX vulnerability. This is a hacker who has obtained the Apple ID password from another site and is logging into their accounts. Apple ID accounts are secure, the ones who are vulnerable are the ones who use the same password on every site and one of those has became compromised.
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Fine. It's not. It's a apple id vulnerability
 
[MOD NOTE]
Enough about the size of Australia vs. any other country. Lets get back on topic
 
macs4nw said:
And since they're living in their parent's basements, and don't have girlfriends, they don't procreate, thus not producing more little hackers, so we should be alright then….. :D

Disclaimer: Post not intended to trivialize the very serious problem of hacking.
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words of wisdom lol
 
Well, this thread was closed, and I haven't seen the OP of that thread post in here yet, but judging from the photo, it would appear based on the AT&T banner on the screen, that at least one user in the US has also been hacked:

attachment.php
 
haruhiko said:
Using a different password for possibly insecure websites is very important.
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This is good advice. Also, as a general rule, don't use common stuff like 12345 or abcdf, your birth date or social number. A good practice is replacing some letters for numbers like E > 3 or A > 4, and place an underscore at the end with a number following it. Like th1ismyp4ssw0rd_01 <- pretty simple but hard to figure out.
 
All -

It's pretty obvious this is a man-in-the-middle attack.

This is how they are able to get passwords for users who are using a special password just for icloud and nothing else.

It's not all people who are using the same password everywhere.

Oleg Pliss is a computer security researcher - its obvious the hackers want to make him look bad to the average end user.

Read:
http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/21/apple-icloud-hacked-dutch-gang/

And:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6270410?start=0&tstart=0
 
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