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Unknown unauthorized modifications detected on my iPhone

My iphone 12 pro max pretty much “clunked” out on me, I lost cellular service & did all the troubleshooting to fix it thinking it was just my service provider my cameras started to say that they were not genuine apple parts I bought this phone brand new from T-Mobile, took it to the apple store to the genius bar & as soon as they hooked the phone up they saw that my cellular network was indeed not working & that all three of my cameras were broken, i could still take pictures so i was confused about that they told me they would have to keep the phone to see what exactly was going on, i got a response back & it said that they detected unauthorized modifications & are sending the phone back to me has this happened to anyone else & if so is there any way i could get the phone fixed? there isn’t any modifications


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 12 Pro Max

Posted on May 25, 2022 6:17 PM

Reply
6 replies

Jul 7, 2022 5:37 PM in response to MrHoffman

First off, my apologies for responding incorrectly to the original thread. But you hit it right on the head. I am a priority target of a VERY well funded adversary, due to random events that landed me here. The final respond when talking to Apple was don’t just factory reset but have the geniuses erase the phone and reinstall the system. Almost immediately after doing so the phone returned to the same behavior. Since then I found a patent that describes a device that clones phone by using the same cell and frequency of the target device.

Jul 7, 2022 8:11 AM in response to pbonaol

pbonaol wrote:

This, and more happened (and still happening) to me. My family members came under cyber attack and the phones had been cloned. Changed SIM card, no changes. Antivirus, did nothing. My photos were edited as soon as I took them. Web page redirects, passwords being changed, my wife had an android, yet in my contacts calling her on FaceTime was available. Apple support said “impossible”, so I’d have them screen share to be show them. I went up through the support tier levels to level 5 then was told I had to have the phone erased and system reinstalled, not reset. Then I tried to FaceTime her and some answered her number on (I assume) an IPhone. Then a warning on my phone “installing a custom system can render the phone inoperable”. Tried 5 burner phones, no help so I just luse the phone and et it happen.


This is an entirely different issue from the original post—the original post was seemingly faulty iPhone hardware.


Here, factory reset and complete password change (to new and unique passwords), including carrier PIN and Wi-Fi, everything, would be the usual and correct path, too.


Password re-use is doom, these days. Working through the list of Apple list of password-related Security Recommendations (Settings > Passwords > Security Recommendations) can help avoid password messes. (But the breach reported here is seemingly larger.)


Antivirus cannot “scan” an iPhone. Best it can do is collect your network traffic for scanning, for logging, and—if the vendor is inclined to profit from the access provided and as some anti-virus developers have decided to do—collection and resale of your traffic. Add-on first-few-hops VPN clients tend to provide much less security than presumed too, and with much higher risk of having your traffic scanned, logged, re-packaged, and sold.


Apple Support can load diagnostics remotely. As for what that message akin to “Custom OS can cause critical problems” error might be, I don’t recognize that message in the context of iPhones. That error message is very similar to a common message shown on Android phones, though.


If an iPhone among six different phones have all shown evidence of breaches, you’re either a priority target for a very well-funded adversary, or there’s likely something else going on.


Here is what Apple recommends doing: https://help.apple.com/pdf/personal-safety/en_US/personal-safety-user-guide.pdf


Jul 7, 2022 6:47 AM in response to Kaiwhit

This, and more happened (and still happening) to me. My family members came under cyber attack and the phones had been cloned. Changed SIM card, no changes. Antivirus, did nothing. My photos were edited as soon as I took them. Web page redirects, passwords being changed, my wife had an android, yet in my contacts calling her on FaceTime was available. Apple support said “impossible”, so I’d have them screen share to be show them. I went up through the support tier levels to level 5 then was told I had to have the phone erased and system reinstalled, not reset. Then I tried to FaceTime her and some answered her number on (I assume) an IPhone. Then a warning on my phone “installing a custom system can render the phone inoperable”. Tried 5 burner phones, no help so I just luse the phone and et it happen.

Jul 7, 2022 5:42 PM in response to pbonaol

Well Funded in this context means that some agency is willing to spend several million dollars to install spyware on your phone. That’s the starting price for software that can do this. If you fall into this category you should not use any smartphone. Get a basic flip phone, and destroy it and replace it every couple of weeks, and only use it with a prepaid SIM bought with cash. Yes, I am being serious if you are being serious.

Jul 7, 2022 5:56 PM in response to pbonaol

pbonaol wrote:

I am a priority target of a VERY well funded adversary, due to random events that landed me here.


Random events are random. Whether there are issues or exploits or coincidences here is unclear.


And if you are a target of somebody with a willingness to spend multiple millions to target you out of a chunk-of-a-billion-scale offensive security budget, this is not the place to get the technical assistance necessary for your security.


Here is a (non-partisan) security checklist, and this doesn't begin to cover your case as a target (if you are):


https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Device-and-Account-Security-Checklist.pdf


Unknown unauthorized modifications detected on my iPhone

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