Hackers have not been out of the news this year. It ranged from alleged Russian hacking to influence the US elections over to the UK’s NHS Being blocked for three days because of a global cyber attack, to a ransomware called WannaCry (because that’s the reaction you got when opening your screen), to the alleged hacking of the French Presidential campaign (Macron) and last but not least, there was the Wikileaks CIA hack.
We’ve had a calm summer in that case, I hear you think, because all of those things happened in the first few months of the year.
Yes, my friends, it’s been a calm summer, but that may just about be coming to an end with this latest news.
Since a few days, several Mac users have been locked out of their own machines as hackers were able to sign into their iCloud accounts and have locked the users out.
Whenever someone gains entry to an iCloud account, this also means they can access the Find My iPhone which can then be used to ‘lock’ a Mac with a passcode (even if that computer has two-factor authentication).
Twitter is bursting with users claiming this is exactly what has happened to them.
It is likely that hackers have come across usernames and passwords because of the various data breaches that have occurred over the past few weeks (Equifax should definitely ring a bell there).
Furthermore, upon inspection, it would seem that the users who were impacted all used that same email addresses, account names, and passwords for multiple accounts, so if hackers figured out one of those account usernames and passwords, they automatically had access to their iCloud details.
Any user who experiences this issue in the coming days should contact Apple Support as quickly as possible and have them remove the Find My iPhone lock.
Already in March this year, there were rumours of a massive iCloud hack, but this was immediately denied by Apple.
Source:
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/20/hackers-find-my-iphone-remote-mac-lock/
