It seems that there’s a new ransom scam that’s targeted towards iOS users. But you can protect yourself from becoming a victim of this. More on that in a second.
First the scam. Some Australian iOS users have had their iPhones and iPads locked by some third party who is demanding money to unlock them. In effect, holding the device for ransom. Here’s what The Age had to say:
iPad, iPhone and Mac owners in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria have reported having their devices held hostage.
One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud “lost phone” message that said “Oleg Pliss” had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked.
The devices are not totally locked though. Assuming that you have a passcode on the device (which you should always have a passcode on your tablet or smartphone):
Users who have a passcode on their device appear to be able to unlock it after the hacker has sent them the message demanding payment, but those who had not set a passcode are unable to.
So what that implies is that the person or persons behind this are using iCloud to do this and are likely leveraging a weak iCloud password or one that has been used elsewhere. So, how can you protect yourself? The best way is to enable two factor authentication on your iCloud account/Apple ID. I wrote a quick document on what two factor authentication is. But in short, it makes your account more secure from any sort of attacks that try to leverage a weak or frequently used password. If you haven’t enabled this feature, I would suggest that you do it now as attacks like these are likely to become more prevalent.
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This entry was posted on May 27, 2014 at 11:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Aussie iOS Users Have Their iDevices Held For Ransom Via iCloud
It seems that there’s a new ransom scam that’s targeted towards iOS users. But you can protect yourself from becoming a victim of this. More on that in a second.
First the scam. Some Australian iOS users have had their iPhones and iPads locked by some third party who is demanding money to unlock them. In effect, holding the device for ransom. Here’s what The Age had to say:
iPad, iPhone and Mac owners in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria have reported having their devices held hostage.
One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud “lost phone” message that said “Oleg Pliss” had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked.
The devices are not totally locked though. Assuming that you have a passcode on the device (which you should always have a passcode on your tablet or smartphone):
Users who have a passcode on their device appear to be able to unlock it after the hacker has sent them the message demanding payment, but those who had not set a passcode are unable to.
So what that implies is that the person or persons behind this are using iCloud to do this and are likely leveraging a weak iCloud password or one that has been used elsewhere. So, how can you protect yourself? The best way is to enable two factor authentication on your iCloud account/Apple ID. I wrote a quick document on what two factor authentication is. But in short, it makes your account more secure from any sort of attacks that try to leverage a weak or frequently used password. If you haven’t enabled this feature, I would suggest that you do it now as attacks like these are likely to become more prevalent.
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This entry was posted on May 27, 2014 at 11:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.