My iPhone 13 Pro Max is being hacked

Kindly cite the source of your claim that "iPhones cannot be hacked." I mean something authoritative like a technical document from Apple, statements made by any person who actually has verifiable experience successfully identifying security vunerabilities, info from any government entity, etc. I don't mean "my friend told me" no matter if he's used a computer for decades or is very smart.

The type of specifics you've mentioned about that vendor sound like the sort of thing that wouldn't be made public. To be honest it makes me wonder what the source of that info is. Regardless it just doesn't translate into evidence to support your conclusions. The cost of their software isn't relevant to the fact that vulnerabilities do exist or that they have actively been exploited and the pieces of information mentioned could never be cobbled together to determine how likely anything is to occur.

The Google Captcha page is unlikely to be the fault of Lockdown Mode. As it notes, the reason it's appearing is the user or another device closely related to his device has made too many or improper requests to google's server. If you have any documentation on exactly how Lockdown mode could cause either of those scenarios it'd be helpful to see. If it is the fault of lockdown mode it's not an expected error every user would encounter it would seem as I couldn't reproduce the error myself although I didn't attempt to follow the exact same steps.

Again opinions and beliefs are important things but it's not right to state your opinions in a manner that negatively affects other people. Drawing irrelevant conclusions and then claiming they are evidence that this person's questions about the security of their iPhone are invalid doesn't help resolve the issue at all or even take into account anything that this person has said.

I don't want you to feel as if your opinions are a bad thing but will safely assume they were only opinions unless references to the source of these statements are produced.

My opinion is that it seems increasingly likely that his device has actually been compromised but I'd need additional information still.

The links provided are not citations and the information contained within doesn't support the statements you've made.

Since you just included a link to a general overview of platform security information without references to anything specific, I can only guess you mean something like "Apple has various security measures therefore iPhones in general are too difficult to hack therefore this person's iPhone was not hacked". The problem with that is that information about how various security measures isn't data on the effectiveness of those measures or how often the security measures are exploited. It'd be understandable to say "we don't know if iPhones can be hacked" if one only knows that multiple security measures exist.

It's like hearing "the only door has 8 different locks" and coming to the conclusion that "the only door cannot be opened by anyone who doesn't have the keys". So how could it also be true that the police found a person napping inside who must have entered through the door?

The conclusion didn't account for lock picking, forcible entry tools, other methods burglars use, locks with codes to open them, the locks weren't engaged, someone inside may have been able to disengage them without keys, the person entered before they upgraded to 8 locks, etc.

Similar generalizations frequently are applied to people asking for help with their device. Privacy is essentially a human right and something affecting a person's privacy can be a serious concern. Some of what he described did sound unusual and needs further investigation and some of it has a simple explanation like the certificate issue when connecting to his local network. Almost everyone knows that issue is well documented and not indicative of anything.

The wikipedia information is also not relevant to much of anything, but it was actually the specific reasons provided which made me question if each bullet point was accurate, or possibly accurate/made up to support the premise that the OP had no cause for concern.

Just one example: saying that user interaction is required must have been based on information from 2016. The headline of a news article from April 2022 reads "Pegasus mobile spyware used zero-click exploits to snoop on Catalan politicians". Not only does that headline prove the first statement false it shows the claim that after discovering it, Apple fixed it in 10 days, was also misleading. It contradicts an earlier statement about who discovered it and implied the threat had long been "fixed" when the truth it wasn't "fixed", and just before contradictory statements were made about who "discovered" too.

It's inaccurate. What's worse is that conclusions based on that inaccurate information are then essentially used as data points in some sort of ill-conceived formula that was used to calculate whether or not the OP was hacked. And it's sort of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation to qualify everything with for the most part while listing reasons why it's impossible.

The only reason I am saying all this is that your opinions evolved into statements made with authority and presented as facts used to justify the dismissal of the OP's legitimate concerns about the security of his device, as is the norm. Not to say that is your fault but in general, it can have negative impacts on people like the ones the OP described among other potential problems. I also feel like it violates principles that Apple holds as core values and it just isn't right.

Dude, I love your logic, if you only knew how many times I have been given a similar “non-logical logic explanation” that in no way proves anything or addresses any real issues that were mentioned.

it reminds me of a very manipulative relationship I was once in where my SO would say something like ‘there’s a name of this demonic entity that, if can be pronounced properly, it means the person who said it is possessed’. So I bite, ‘okay, then how is it pronounced properly?’ The response was ‘I can’t say it and don’t know, but if I hear it correctly, I would know’.

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. So you are saying that you want me to look at a word, try to pronounce it, and only then can you say if I said it correctly? That’s basically putting a whole lot of trust that you wouldn’t lie, or use this as a chance to claim something crazy.

Yet this type of thinking or “logic” has been used since the beginning of time and is typically used by the same group of people who do not believe in science or physics, but rather that things are possible because a Devine Being allows or provides the possibility. I’ve encountered it so often that I immediately respond by saying FALSE LOGIC, WARNING!!

It’s definitely reassuring that some people still have a logical way of reasoning any issue instead of simply trying to talk using large words and referencing unrelated data to support an idea. Thanks for your post.

I’m just curious about your statement that malware on an iPhone can’t survive a factory reset, yet it is possible in android devices.

I’m new to iPhones for the simple reason that I found Android based devices are too easy to circumvent security used by the user and can be easily done in minutes with physical access to the device and even remotely reasonably fast. And hard resetting does nothing because the boot menu itself that does the reset is altered to appear as if it were functioning, but actually only removes content from the internal SD and user settings - all apps that were installed including system apps that definitely were not pre installed when new yet cannot be uninstalled by the user.

So just wondering how the boot loader or hard reset process works in an iPhone and whether similar steps would simply rewrite code over that appears to have worked? For it to be impossible, the factory image along with the boot code that contains the instructions for installing the image would have to be on separate storage and be hardwired to be non-write able.

just a thought

That all sounds somewhat unusual although it's impossible to say exactly without being there to see exactly what your describing.

What do you mean by "Im still having problems such as connecting to server" please explain step by step exactly what happens? Is this related to " it wont let me see if im sharing into with a "sorry can't connect to server at this time"". I'm not entirely sure what you're describing to be honest.

You're not able to make phone calls and what happens when you try to make phone calls? The problems you listed don't really explain what's happening.

Btw you also know that Apple employees don't respond to these posts right?

I’m sorry, that is not quite true. My Apple ID and password were somehow stolen. I had just changed my password only mere 3 hours before I had gotten the 2FA Code request on my Apple Watch and my iPhone which was in my hands. I know I never had opened any phishing emails that led to malicious sites. Because I strictly used that Apple ID email address for Apple strictly Apple purposes only. Notifications about changes that I knew I had personally made on my account , which had no links for me to click on, and App Store Purchase receipts only. No one other than Apple knew about that account. I know there are scam emails that are out there pretending to be from Apple, but I knew mine were strictly/directly from Apple, because like I had just mentioned I was able to confirm the changes made on my account and the purchases made from those receipts.

You’re very welcome! I hope everything works out! There are articles on the Apple Support Page too on how to go about doing this. I called Apple Support for help. I had worked with an advisor for awhile until we made this move!

Good Luck!

I understand the points you make in your responses and tried to address each conclusion that was not accurate. The way I understand you have been saying approximately the following 3 things:

1. iPhones are very secure and

2. Pegasus is capable of such a hack but it's too expensive and complicated and can only be done by governments

3. It's extraordinarily low odds this user was hacked.

1. iPhones are likely more secure than most alternatives. There's evidence to support that, but there is also evidence of numerous exploits that are able to bypass those security measures.
2. Yes Pegasus is real. Yes it is prohibitively expensive/complicated/unobtainable. This has nothing to do with this user. Pegasus is not really of any relation to any other vulnerability other than that they are both vulnerabilities. A simple example: You spent hours cooking dinner. I bought a protein bar. They have nothing to do with each other, other than the topic of food.
3. That may be true for people targetted by Pegasus. You may be right that its more likely the average user here hasn't been a victim of Pegasus. It's not relevant because you don't have any real statistics or metrics for anything other than Pegasus costs $xxx,xxx/y.

It's a mistake to believe all malware will be like Pegasus. Why? Pegasus is a "unicorn".

But using the same logic you used to determine that iPhones can't be hacked/this user wasn't hacked would mean that the only available people on dating apps would be a small number of unicorns and almost no one else.

Hopefully this all has given you more insight into the complex reality of things!

I haven’t kept up with this discussion sorry. LatriciaP gave you a few examples of the citations you are wanting. Apple posts those themselves. They always do with every update, except for 16.0.3. When they do not publicly post the security flaws and patches that they had to make, that is a red flag to me that they did not want anyone to know what the security issue was they found because it was probably something big and not good. But Apple posts those with every update themselves. I do not get how people want proof that Apple does not have security flaws or are vulnerable to attacks. Apple themselves tell the public that they have security vulnerabilities. They even say in their privacy policy pages that they pay people who find vulnerabilities in their systems. They want people to contact them letting them know what they found. They have bug bounties.

No problem. Thank you for posting those security flaws that Apple themselves actually publicly post with every update. I read them all the time, yet even though Apple announces them people seem to want to look the other way. It’s real, I had been compromised, had to work with the Engineers at Apple Support for a year.

I am starting to wonder if they actually did believe what they were saying was true. Otherwise why ask me for citations? No one would ask for those unless they really thought that I was just making it all up or something.

That's probably too optimistic though and my instincts tell me really they know what I'm saying is true and what they say isn't, but were just hoping to make it seem like everything was fine. No idea though..

I truly think they believe that they are right.. I had friends that had called me a nobody and therefore no one would want to hack into my phone. I also just had a discussion with another person that I’ve known about this topic, and he seriously believes that iPhones cannot be taken over. I tried to explain to them yes they can and explained the updates, Apple’s public security vulnerabilities, my issues, but he would not stop telling me that an iPhone cannot be hacked into. That same night though he opened a phishing email, and I told him do not click on that link because it will lead you to a malicious site and…and he told me he clicks on them all the time and to stop viruses is to just type in you phone’s passcode… but you’re right too… if they were trying to make everything was fine, it seemed slightly negative. I’ve read other discussions with the same topic and same answers.