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Apple Devices Held For Ransom, Rumors Claim 40M iCloud Accounts Hacked; Apple-Related Forums Compromised (csoonline.com)
Steve Ragan, reporting for CSOOnline: Since February, a number of Apple users have reported locked devices displaying ransom demands written in Russian. Earlier this week, a security professional posted a message to a private email group requesting information related a possible compromise of at least 40 million iCloud accounts. Salted Hash started digging around on this story after the email came to our attention. In it, a list member questioned the others about a rumor concerning "rumblings of a massive (40 million) data breach at Apple." The message goes on to state that the alleged breach was conducted by a Russian actor, and vector "seems to be via iCloud to the 'locate device' feature, and is then locking the device and asking for money."In a separate report, the publication reports that three websites owned by Penton Technology -- MacForums.com, HotScripts.com, and WebHostingTalk.com -- have been compromised and their databases are now being sold on the Darknet. While nothing is confirmed, there is a possibility that some of the rumored 40M compromised Apple ID credentials may have come from these forums, or from LinkedIn's recent hack.
These are not "compromised Apple ID credentials"... they are compromised email addresses and passwords for for OTHER mac/apple related websites... so if you're dumb enough to reuse your Apple ID email address and password on those sites they might match up.
I read this, thinking, "What hack?" cause I haven't had any issues at all. Then I realized the what actually happened. This sounds like the same thing that happened with the supposed hacking of Teamviewer. It was a matter of people reusing the same credentials in multiple locations, so as soon as one low-security place is compromised, you're still screwed in other places even if they have high security.
All I can say is that, today, you *have* to use either MFA, a personal password database, preferably both. I use 1password to store all my passwords, and Duo Security (free for personal use) for MFA. There are other options as well, such as Google Authenticate for MFA, or keypass for password storage.
1password is relatively expensive, but it's virtually hassle free and will let me sync my db across all my devices (Linux is read-only, unfortunately) and integrates with all major browsers. I don't use Keypass, but IIRC it works on all platforms including Linux, but it's browser plugins are lacking.
The most important aspect of password databases, is that they let you generate a very long, random password that is unique to the site you visit. You don't care what the password is, because you can just call it up from the database, but it makes your account essentially unhackable (provided the site you're accessing doesn't do something stupid like store the passwords in plain text).
This is 2016, not 1970. People can no longer afford to be naive about password management anymore. It would be nice if articles like these could take a couple moments out of their breathless handwaving to let people know that these options exist.
ah, trolls. It was tempting to mod you appropriately (I have the points), but I dislike down-modding and reserve it for the never-give-up (like APK). Do you understand how your smug and self-conceited claim to be moderated into oblivion was, at best, a self-fulfilling prediction (after all, you posted a troll comment, so why would the comment not be moderated as such?)
This "local Apple fanboy" wouldn't happen to be a figment of your imagination, would he? I mean, such a creature is possible, but considering you are completely ignoring the reported facts you are either a bigger troll than you look, or so self deluded in your hatred of Apple that you are blind.
Many normal users (who, by the way, are largely *windows* users simply due to the weight of numbers -- platform really is irrelevant) use a single, bad password for everything. So when linkedin gets hacked and their bad password is cracked -- the bad guy now has the password and can do anything the user can do with the password. Which, for iOS devices, includes locking the device and posting a message.
Is Apple wrong to empower its users with this in case their device is lost?
Is Apple responsible for users selecting weak passwords and then re-using them?
Is Apple responsible for the security of unrelated third parties?
Unless you can answer yes to all of those then Apple is not responsible. And I'm very glad that we do not live in a world where any of those are true.
This doesn't even make sense. There's no way these sites were using AppleID accounts, or collecting them.
Seriously, it is not even in the realm of things that are possible that someone who prefers using devices that are marketed as "it just works" would use the same credentials on multiple services. In fact, such a thing is literally inconceivable. It's so inconceivable that I don't even know what I'm talking about. None of this makes sense.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Do you have any proof? Screenshots, internet archive, etc? Anything at all?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Is Apple responsible for users selecting weak passwords? Yes and no.
Forcing a user to use a TFA protocol significantly reduced the danger of a weak or reused password might pose.
Can Apple stop someone from reusing a password (weak or otherwise)? No.
Can Apple force users to use TFA? Yes.