Could my Apple Watch series 9 be hacked?

I’ve never had this happen, and it’s made me quite uneasy. Tonight, while wearing my Apple Watch, I felt a bunch of haptic feedback. When I looked at the watch face, it was on the passcode screen and numbers were being typed very quickly, without touching the screen. Almost like someone was trying to hack the watch. I kept trying to turn it off, but couldn’t get to the screen to power off as it was attempting passcodes and ended up calling my husband. Eventually I was able to get to the screen to power off, but it was extremely difficult and ended up sending out an SOS in the meantime. I got the watch to power off, and ended up resetting it and restoring from a backup.


I’ve had Apple Watches before and this has never happened.


[Edited by Moderator]

Posted on Feb 1, 2024 4:22 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 16, 2024 1:13 AM

There was a problem with the latest update that affected some people and the watch seems to randomly enter passcodes

Reboot the watch


Anyone who has a locked watch as a result: should Put Apple Watch on its charger.


Press and hold the side button until you see the screen with the power button in the upper-right corner, then let go of the side button. If your Apple Watch has an earlier version of watchOS, you see the Power Off slider instead of the power button.


Press and hold the Digital Crown until you see the red Reset button.


Tap Reset, then tap Reset again to confirm.


After Apple Watch unpairs completely, you can pair again. Remember that you'll need the Apple ID and password that were used to set up the watch.

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33 replies

Mar 31, 2024 9:37 AM in response to Bri426

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

May 18, 2024 5:22 PM in response to Bri426

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.


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Could my Apple Watch series 9 be hacked?

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