My devices have been hacked. What do I do?

Not a valid theory as there are numerous victims who are not Telstra customers. My family uses Optus & Telstra and we had three devices compromised on both networks. The most likely - according to our work IT guys who are working on other employees hacked phones - is that so far all of those affected have used a VPN anonymising service. Most in order to either access the US iTunes store, play games, or to stream movies that are Geo-Blocked in Australia.

I have read a lot of these messages but unless I am missing something there is no answer to unlock my IPad. I have connected via PC but it won't let me factory restore as it says - "Find my Ipad" must be turned off before Ipad can be restored"

The Ipad is not connecting to the internet so cannot turn off remotely and as I can't get past the Passcode I can't turn on internet access or turn off "Find my Ipad" on the device itself.

Any useful advise would be great.

MidniteDaydream wrote:

Not a valid theory as there are numerous victims who are not Telstra customers.

Nobody had said so thus far, that I had seen, but I guess this now shoots that theory in the foot.

A common VPN service could explain it, but only if that VPN were overwhelmingly used by Australian and New Zealand users, and not by anyone else in the world. I don't know that there are any that fit that bill. Unblock-Us, which you mentioned earlier, does not fit that criterion.

Getflix is the only Australian based service that routes IP addresses to tunnel into the US, but it isn't a VPN service. I know for a fact they have updated their servers as soon as the heartbleed exploit was reported. Anything is possible. If we can find the common thread, then we can put this to bed.

My kids use unblock and if you look at several of their video "how to set up" examples, it seems they have different VPN servers for different areas. There are also a large number of smaller "anonymising" apps that might be suspect. Hard to be sure, as even with my kids they have used several different VPN servers, some for games, some for video, some for supposed security. Even Avast offer an anonymising VPN service nowadays. So far it is the only common denominator that I am aware of.

In order to use an iPad or iPhone with unblock-us they provide a VPN service. For computers they just have you change the protocol and domain name server. I imagine other companies would do something similar. BTW, I doubt that there is anything surreptitious about unblock-us, but they might have been a target for data mining - maybe even in the early stages of heartbeat.

II'm in Australia too & my sons account was hacked. His password & Apple ID/email address was changed & apple have told me too bad. The phone is locked with iCloud & while I don't know the password we cannot restore it to factory settings. We cannot disable location services so the phone is off unable to be used so this creep cannot "find my phone"

any ideas on how to restore to factory settings & dodge the whole iCloud thing would be great.

apples lack of care/empathy has left me disgusted.

MidniteDaydream wrote:

In order to use an iPad or iPhone with unblock-us they provide a VPN service. For computers they just have you change the protocol and domain name server. I imagine other companies would do something similar. BTW, I doubt that there is anything surreptitious about unblock-us, but they might have been a target for data mining - maybe even in the early stages of heartbeat.

It might be worth sending them an eamil and ask if their servers in OZ might have been breached.

I moved from unblock-us to Getflix, as it was local and half the price.

Alert to all: Anyone reading this, who uses the same email and password for their Apple ID and other web services, don't.

If you share an Apple ID with family members or even friends, don't. Because if you do, you have no idea what other people might use those details for.

Always keep account details that have financial connection to you, separate from any other web accounts.

Having been in IT for many years, it just astounds me the number of people who share these kind of accounts. People must understand, ID is what it says, your identity. Keep it private, and do not share it. I keep telling my clients, but it doesn't seem to get through, until something like this happens.

Apple ID's cost nothing. It is not that hard.

deskokat wrote:

Thanks Andrew J. But in this case, what's the warning to people like me who don't use the same passwords across different accounts, but still got shafted anyway?

I empathise with your situation. Haven't had this happen but had other things that have caused much grief. Just a question to rule it in or out, do you share your Apple ID with anyone else?

Somehow, a third part has harvested your details and logged in to your account. We know what the problem is, now we have to find the cause. In the mean time, people need to take as many precautions as they can.

Tigerlily75 wrote:

I'm Optus wifi at home & my iPhone is pre-paid Virgin Mobile (which uses the Optus network).

I do use Unblock-Us for Netflix. Though all family/friends who also use it were not affected.

Just a question to narrow things down, do you, or have you shared your Apple ID with any other person?

Andrew J, it IS a fair question to ask - and goodness knows anything that's common to all of us needs examining. I DO share my ID - with my 13 year old son. But he doesn't have the password - it's a way of having parental control to key in the password myself and ok his activities. I think he's too young to have his own just yet. I've asked him if he's shared it with anyone - but that's a definite no. Wouldn't be much point without the Password anyway...

My wife got hit in the US as well. Have not heard a lot here, but people may just be waking up or the attack is spreading. Not sure when it triggered. Both devices passcoded so no damage. Never been or connected to australia, and at least one of the devices was purchased in US/Canada (one shipped direct from China)

wheelman2188 wrote:

I'm in the US. Never been to Australia. Hacked last night byt the Oleg Pliss nonsense. Currently restoring to try and get it back online.

Now that is seriously worrying. I've already turned off Find My iPhone on all 3 of my iDevices just in case.

Yea tell me about it! All I can find is news talking about Australia and NZ and i've never been to either or used any services etc from there. But my phone got hit. I just restored from back up and all seems to be working but I will be changing all passwords.