Ever since May 7th, 2025 my Apple devices have been contacting multiple Chinese IPs. They are the only devices on my network doing so and my Mac mini is not signed into any Apple Accounts. No other devices on the network are trying to reach these IPs. I’m in the US and my firewall is blocking these connections. What would be causing this?
iPhone 15 Pro Max, iOS 18
We’ve noticed similar unexplained connections to Chinese IP addresses starting after updating to iOS 18.5 (not necessarily connected events) on multiple Apple devices. Despite efforts such as monitoring traffic with tcpdump and Wireshark and resetting devices via DFU (without restoring from iCloud backup), the connections persist. We also used App Privacy Report but found no correlation between deleted apps and these connections.
This behavior appears isolated to Apple devices in our environment and is consistent across different networks, suggesting it originates from Apple’s software or services. Apple Support didn’t provide any clear explanations or solutions.
We believe it would be best to report these findings directly to Apple’s security team via their portal (https://security.apple.com/) before escalating to other authorities in the EU or US.
Here are some of contacted IPs:
122.246.2.7
223.109.243.5
101.71.175.135
113.141.163.10
42.56.77.227
113.142.186.8
116.153.82.194
101.71.164.197
180.97.241.196
Private relay?
VPN? they route traffic around the world.
I assume by firewall you mean in the wifi router. How is this linked to Apple devices, particularly ones not signed into Apple.
So either they're kosher, or you have rogue apps. Tiktok?
They are Apple but I question how that is Kosher? They aren't TikTok. ByteDance uses Oracle Cloud in the US. Do they then export data back home? Maybe.
Apple CDNs are kosher by definition, no?
Ownership of the data is more important than the location, unless this anti-China hysteria is a more important ideology to you.
Apple Devices Contacting Chinese IPs
