Apple seems to be in a soup regarding all the hacking threats that it is facing at this point. Several reports show that Apple is being attacked from all quarters. One after another report of Apple's devices getting compromised has surfaced lately.
Recently Forbes investigated and discovered that a surveillance technology by Killer Mobile has allowed Russians to spy on iPhones. The report revealed that the spyware created by Killer Mobile made its way from Las Vegas to Russia. This information came from a tipster, who is a security researcher. As the tipster informed, Killer Mobile struck a deal with the Russian firms, including OpenGSM, a company that deals with surveillance tech devices and software. The Moscow-based OpenGSm allegedly has a manual that directs users to visit a website connected to Alner, where users can download iPhone spyware for the equivalent of $650. Reportedly, OpenGSM also hosted malware for Android in 2015.
In another disturbing report, recently it has been revealed in new documents from WikiLeaks that CIA has allegedly used a hacking program for Apple's iPhones and Mac computers using such technologies, which the users apparently couldn't disable even after resetting their devices. Apple or CIA both have refrained from giving any comments or confirmation on the matter as of yet. However, security experts have said that these kinds of security exploits are plausible but they do not pose much threat to users, as most of these tricks are old.
The next threat came from a source, which is claiming to be a group of hackers, called "Turkish Crime Family". According to Motherboard, a few days ago this group claimed to have logged in details of hundreds of millions of Apple accounts. They threatened the company to remotely wipe off all data from those accounts via iCloud, unless Apple pays $75,000 in bitcoin or $100,000 in iTunes gift cards to them. Today ZDNet informed that it was able to verify 54 accounts that were revealed by the hackers but it's still not clear that how many more accounts' details they possess or how they came to know about them.
"There have not been any breaches in any of Apple's systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services. We're actively monitoring to prevent unauthorized access to user accounts and are working with law enforcement to identify the criminals involved. To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication," said Apple regarding this hack.
