Ride the Lightning

Hackers Lock MACs, iPhones and iPads

May 28, 2014

You don't often get to say, "It started in Australia" with respect to technology, but the current wave of attacks on Apple products does indeed seem to have struck Australia first. According to a BGR story, users of MACs, iPhones and iPad woke up yesterday in Australia to find that their devices had been locked using Apple's Find My IPhone, Find my iPad and Find My Mac features.

These features were meant to allow users to remotely locate stolen or lost Apple devices and to lock those devices. Hackers have been able to compromise Apple's iCloud-based remote device locking feature to lock the devices, displaying a message on the devices that demands a ransom be paid via PayPal to have the devices unlocked. Though the locking is real enough, it is, as I write, unclear whether the demand for payment is actually a hoax.

BGR recommends having a PIN enabled on the devices as well as utilizing two-factor authentication to protect iCloud accounts. I'm sure we'll hear more on this story as the facts develop . . .

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