Could my Apple Watch series 9 be hacked?

Today, my Ultra 2 goofed out as well. it was having random digitizer activity without being touched. my arm was a bit sweaty, andi had a cracked screen protector, so i thought it was moisture under it, so i took it off wiped it, but nothing there, so it kept trying to open apps and it actually sent a random photo to a friend. A Photo that was not even on my phone or watch.

it was sent in Messages... neon purple lips!

see below

then, I took it off and it went into what looked like brute force passcode cracking.. I had to get on chat with my carrier and was advised to reset it. i could not even power it down, see video clip. too much touch activity from nowhere.

I would say there is a glitch, But i can't explain the sent photo. not when its not on my phone and i have never seen it before. and it was a photo, not a sticker or emoji etc..

I could not get it to power down using the watch buttons, my timeout eventually reached an 1 hr before the unpair and restore from last backup.

video clip:

https://youtube.com/shorts/3YDSU2oxeiI?si=GpCxQ_gAI0o-faxs

Please read thru all the replies to Bri426's original post you asked this question to. There are a lot of answers provided.

With no wifi and no cellular, how do you think it might have been "hacked"?

Nobody hacked you, there was a bug in OS10.3, make sure you have OS10.5 and iOS17.5 installed.

Me too on 5/22/24

This happened to me. This was not random. It was lightning fast and they managed to change some settings on my watch. I have never seen that screen before. I updated my phone immediatley but the watch will not update. Anytime the update starts it then says paused. I am taking this back to Apple. The hacking was machine fast. Impossible for a human. It was a computer going through my watch and then trying the codes once I took it off. The watch does not have cellular and I was not on wifi. Pretty incredible. Very scary. Apple is really going downhill now

The bluetooth was on. Someone either connected to the watch that way or my phone has been compromised and I dont know. I am going to Apple today to figure out what they say but I am going back to my Rolex 😂

So I took my watch to Apple yesterday and explained what happened. The service attendant said that they do not investigate whether a device has been hacked. He did explain the problem about the ghost touch screen issue. He did say that "if" the device was hacked it would be through an application that is loaded on the watch. That theoretically it is possible.

We unpaired and re-installed software and the watch then very slowly updated. I have not seen another problem so far.

Apple will never admit their devices can be hacked that is for obvious reasons...

Cra-1980 wrote:

So I took my watch to Apple yesterday and explained what happened. The service attendant said that they do not investigate whether a device has been hacked. He did explain the problem about the ghost touch screen issue. He did say that "if" the device was hacked it would be through an application that is loaded on the watch. That theoretically it is possible.

We unpaired and re-installed software and the watch then very slowly updated. I have not seen another problem so far.

Apple will never admit their devices can be hacked that is for obvious reasons...

Anything can be hacked, given enough time, money, and skill. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone is interested in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hack your watch. And, I don't believe Apple has ever said their products can't be hacked.

It's far more likely you had the fault fixed with watchOS 10.4, which is why the update fixed it.

My watch was randomly trying to access the passcode and when I tried to turn the watch off who/whatever had control of it kept canceling the power off. You can not tell me this is "ghosting" this was a direct attack to try to access the watch.

I finally powered it off and subsequently forced to factory reset. I am installing the latest update and will pair it once again.

same thing happened with my Ultra 2 just now in my sleep(3:50am). Scary

Thank you!

Tip: read the whole thread, starting at the end, before posting.

Basically this exact same thing happened to me last night.