The iCloud compromise: what actually happened? Well, in short iCloud itself wasnt technically compromised, though some accounts were accessed illegally. A security flaw was discovered with the Apple Find My iPhone service. Usually, when you enter the wrong password on any Apple controlled site or service, you only have a few attempts before your account is locked out. After 5 incorrect attempts, the account becomes inaccessible and you have to go through an account recovery process. Find My iPhone, however, did not have this feature implemented. Therefore, you could constantly try passwords for an account, without being locked out. Someone wrote a program to try a list of 500 passwords which match Apple criteria to access accounts, in this case a number of celebrities, or those they sent saucy photos to. It has been suggested that Apple have fixed the problem. There has been no disclosure as to how many accounts were affected by this. Its unlikely to have affected you, as this seems to have been a targetted attack. It leaves a large question mark over iCloud (and internet based services in general). Many of the published images were supposedly deleted. The biggest lesson to learn from this (other than dont take dodgy photos of yourself) is that you are often not deleting anything you have placed online. You are simply hiding it from yourself and the general public. If you wouldnt send it on a postcard, dont put it online!
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 19:01:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015