Apple devices hacked by ‘Oleg Pliss’ and held for ransom

[SLM]

Apple devices hacked by ‘Oleg Pliss’ and held for ransom

Hey, remember when Apple promised that their products were ‘unhackable’? Well, they were wrong.
iPhone and iPad owners in Australia were in for a real shock when they woke to a strange sound coming from their devices Tuesday morning. According to The Huffington Post, the sound was not an alarm, but rather an alert informing them that their device had been hacked and locked.
A message appeared on the screen, stating that their Apple device has been “hacked by Oleg Pliss” with a message demanding between $50 and $100 to unlock it.
Many who were affected by the hack took to Twitter to voice their concerns.


According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Apple customers reported problems in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria. It is unclear as to how many have people have had their devices hacked but reports from ITWire said that users as far as New Zealand have been hit.
The alleged cause of the attack was the hacking and exploitation of a feature called “Find My iPhone,” which allows users to remotely lock their devices via iCloud.
Apparently, users who have assigned a passcode to their iPhone or iPad have figured out that they could claim back control of their devices by restoring them from a backup by connecting to iTunes, ZDNet reports.
However, those who did not set up passcodes are struggling because that allowed the hacker to create one for them, locking them out of their device.
Though Apple has yet to comment on the situation, a thread from an online support forum offers advice for those affected by the hack.
So if you haven’t done so already, assign passcodes to your Apple devices now. You should also consider changing your iCloud password and following Apple’s two-step verification process.


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/apple-devices-hacked-oleg-pliss-held-ransom-180932186.html

 

[Praxius]

The only reason why Macs seemed unhackable was because nobody bothered with Macs due to PC's being the larger market and thus, more incentive to hack them.

I remember when Windows Vista came out there was a hacking competition video I saw where they pitted Windows Vista up against the latest Mac OS of the time and one hacker breached the Mac within seconds.

Now that Macs are becoming more popular and more people are buying them, people are going to have a very harsh lesson in regards to how little Apple has put into keeping their systems secure.

Windows has the edge in that regard. Yes, there's plenty of viruses and attacks on Windows based systems, but again.... that's like there being more car crashes around the world vs plane crashes..... a larger amount of one compared to the other will increase the chances of something happening to the larger amount.

Of course with the above hack, along with 90% of all critical issues with Mac products, there won't be an easy fix that users can apply.... no, you'll have to send your product into a Mac specialist to fix it and then have it returned in a week or two.

And whether or not you'll retain any of your files afterwards isn't much of a hope.

I've used Macs for a number of years while in Photography and they're the sh*ttiest of the sh*t.

My wife had an IPod back when they were popular and she had to send it in four separate times due to an unhappy face appearing on her screen saying something was wrong and there wasn't a single thing she could do but send it in to get fixed. She couldn't even power it off and had to let the battery drain. They couldn't fix it and ended up giving her a new IPod..... loaded it up.... and about a month later the same issue..... four times, four replacements.

Eventually she got fed up and bought a Creative Zen Mp3 player.

Still has it today and works just fine, 7 years on.

Just because a business sells you something that looks pretty and expensive, that doesn't mean it's good.

 

[mentalfloss]

Who doesn't have a passcode for their phone? smh