Icloud account just got hacked

tsnow20 wrote:

But I think the issue has been confused by a few (albeit well intentioned) users who haven't fully comprehended the problem.

The problem is not in dispute. It is the root cause that is unclear. There are a dozen or so people who say their iCloud accounts have been compromised. At any given time, there are a dozen or so people on these forums claiming just about anything. Given the size of Apple's market, there are likely a dozen or so unusual things going on all the time.

Nobody needs to remove anything from iCloud. Changing your password won't hurt. If you have been compromised, contact Apple. If you really have good documentation and can prove a good case, file a bug report. When you pick "Security" as the issue, you get Apple's attention right away. But please don't do that unless you have absolute, irrefutable proof. Otherwise, you are just acting as a spammer yourself and clogging the pipes with junk.

I agree that deleting contacts is pointless, so I haven't bothered with that. I did do a complete wipe of my iphone, and set it up as a new device, then synced contacts back. More than likely as you say, the spammer now has all those contact details anyway, no point in removing them.

I doubt we'd be able to find the root cause without some assistance from Apple. The only thing we have to go on is evidence left in our sent folders, no authentication data or failed login attempts or whatever.

Filing a bug report would do no good with the information we have on hand.

etresoft wrote:

Nobody needs to remove anything from iCloud. Changing your password won't hurt. If you have been compromised, contact Apple. If you really have good documentation and can prove a good case, file a bug report. When you pick "Security" as the issue, you get Apple's attention right away. But please don't do that unless you have absolute, irrefutable proof. Otherwise, you are just acting as a spammer yourself and clogging the pipes with junk.

I agree completely. We don't have access to the necessary tools to be able to track down what happened. Apple does. Not only do they have the tools, but I feel fairly safe in guranteeing that they're interested in knowing about these experiences. iCloud is clearly a major part of their business plan for the foreseeable future, and they definitely want it to be secure and trusted.

FWIW I don't have a MAC nor do I use my @me account.

If you're posting here, then you are using an AppleID and password, right? That's all anyone would need to send email from your @me.com account.

The same AppleID and password are used for:

• These forums
• iOS app store
• iTunes Store
• iChat
• iCloud services (from web, PC, Mac, or iOS device)
• Apple Online Store
• Making reservations at an Apple Retail Store
• Access Apple.com support

And I'm probably missing a few things.

FWIW My apple ID is a different email address than my @me email address and I have not used any Apple services in some time.

yourmacexpert wrote:

FWIW I don't have a MAC nor do I use my @me account.

If you're posting here, then you are using an AppleID and password, right? That's all anyone would need to send email from your @me.com account.

The same AppleID and password are used for:

• These forums
• iOS app store
• iTunes Store
• iChat
• iCloud services (from web, PC, Mac, or iOS device)
• Apple Online Store
• Making reservations at an Apple Retail Store
• Access Apple.com support

And I'm probably missing a few things.

AAOO wrote:

FWIW My apple ID is a different email address than my @me email address

That doesn't matter.

If someone knows your AppleID and password, that person can log in to iCloud and send mail from your @me.com address, even if they don't know your @me.com address.

Just wanted to add that I have experienced the same problem as mentioned, submitted a bugreport as suggested, spoke to separate people at Apple, neither told me anything useful. fml

Same thing happened to me starting Wednesday spam was send to contacts that synced to my icloud account. I don't use this account much and doubt someone randomly guessed my PW.

After changing the PW on every device and confirming anyway, this morning my iphone was prompting me that my user name or PW were not matching. I re-typed the new PW and couldn't get it to recognize it so I guess it was hacked again and PW was changed, or it was locked out due to suspicious activity or something.

The exact same emails about earning money from home were sent from my account, I had a friend forward the email sent to him to my regular email and as far as I could tell the IP was originating from Serbia.

Another weird thing is that I was one of the few people that experienced "outages" of the service a couple weeks ago, I wonder if the outages were due to a hack?

95.180.101.5

nickfromconcord wrote:

I had my account comprimised as well. I had two emails in my sent folder (a big F U to the articles lately by CNET and others saying it was email spoofing/spaming) from "ME". I have now changed my password twice and, like others, I'm finding this extremely frustrating. I do not use my iCloud email account but obviously find it essential to linking my data between my devices.

What a PItA!

Relax. The article on CNET was a look at options and is just a hesitation to jump to conclusions that this means Apple's servers are compromised. I wrote it far before many additional reports came out about the same behavior (even though it got posted quite a bit after I wrote it). It doesnt at all accuse you of anything, and only mentions other possibilities. I'm trying to contact Apple about this, but so far have not received any information from them.

Also hacked. Ugh!

Except that the first post mentioned that the mail was in the iCloud "Sent mail" folder. Others made the same mistake you did, so no big deal there.

There is an issue here, and I'm hesitant to point fingers. I've been on the other side of this fence also, having managed mail servers. Typically the case is that someone uses a dictionary based word for a password, or "12345". Accounts with repeated failed password attempts are locked. Usually when an account is compromised though, it wasn't our webmail front-end that was abused, it was SMTP servers spamming to hundreds, sometimes thousands of e-mails.

Someone at Apple is going around locking accounts though, unless this is an automated system. I'd still like to know why. Reps are so far clueless.

Also hacked.

Hundred+ spam emails sent from my mac.com email (which I've never used).

Password changed on my iCloud.

I d/l anti-virus software Sophos, and it found a virus called Mal/Palevo-A which was a nightmare to get off. I had to do it manually, with no experience, and it took me all day.

I'm in Slovenia, where getting hold of anyone from Apple is practically impossible. Please could someone let me know what the **** is going on?

Thanks in advance,

Ben

p.s - Also, my Apple I.d. is inaccessible. My password has been changed, when i ask for a reset email, I don't get one, and when I try the other option (security question), it first asks for my date of birth, and then refuses to accept it. In other words, my password has been changed, but so has my email and birth date information. I'd say this is pretty serious...

We got hacked too, Spam mail went out yesterday using our contact list.

I was hacked too as soon as I signed up for a @me email. Spam emails went to all my contacts, then my iCloud passwords were no good. I had to reset several times. Now I'm getting spam text messages on my iPhone. I'm not going to use iCloud anymore till fixed, it seems Apple has problems securing its email servers.