My devices have been hacked. What do I do?

You don't need to erase the device from iCloud, nor do you need to remove it from your account.

All you need to do is take it out of lost mode and follow the instructions listed here.

Apple Devices Hacked Overnight

+1 - following this advice solved the issue for us.

Currently at Apple store. They are all completely unaware of this problem. Their suggestion is to plug your phone into your computer, open iTunes and hold down home and power buttons til you get an option to restore. One restarted chose the restore from iCloud option. Choose a restore point prior to the time your phone was hacked. Change your Apple ID password if you haven't already and set a passcode on your phone when setting up again. Mine seems to be ok after doing this: Good luck everyone!

analogue cheese wrote:

I also cant remember one of the questions - its not a question i would usually set - so i'm thinking they've changed it so i can't get back in.

hmm - didnt think of that. wife too claims the questions aren't ones she'd normally plump for. hopefully disabling find my iphone on the device will mitigate some risk for now. I guess they can still run rampant through the icloud account.

I too couldn't remember the answers but you do get the option to have a verification email sent to you rather than going the answer the question route.

just spent 1.5 hours on the phone to Apple support. they had only just started hearing of the problem.

Basically no joy with anything so have had to restore to factory settings.

I don't know if this will work for everyone but what they did for me was log into icloud at www.icloud.com and log in using apple id and password.

Remove all devices from your account (they can be added in later) except those that are locked.

you can try to remove lock but unless your device is connected to the internet it won't work.

Ended up doing factory restore (thankfully I had backed up a week ago).

(To get itunes to recognise and restore, turn off device>press and hold home button>plug in cable to connect to itunes> (this should recognise the device)> click on restore and go through the full process.

So far has worked.... now just have to back it all up again

I have an unlocked iphone originally from Australia, but its now with me living in Toronto, Canada - and got the same hacked message mid-morning. So this tells me its not Aussie service providers, and only icloud related. I changed my password in icloud, but now can't log back in to turn off 'Find my iphone' before doing a restore. Its asking me to setup icloud on my device. Anyone have this issue too?

I am in Melbourne, Australia and My 2 iPhones and 2 iPads sounded an alarm this morning at 1am one after another waking up the family and since they went off one after another I was not happy zooming around the house to turn them off. I too had a message of demand for $50 from "Oleg Pliss" with a phone number of 5841293189 and an email address of helplock@gmx.com . I have a password on all items and when I went in the message disappeared and there does not appear, at this stage, to be any affect on my iPads or iPhones. Bit disappointed that Apple have not said anything at this stage but then again they may still be asleep in the USA!

Message was edited by: Anthony Warren

Anthony Warren wrote:

Bit disappointed that Apple have not said anything at this stage but then again they may still be asleep in the USA!

Until they get it figured out how it's been breached they'll likely not say anything.

http://viewnews.com.au/apple-devices-hacked-overnight-459402/

My phone didn't have a passcode at the time (it now does!!) so I did the long winded way.

All other devices which had a passcode were ok once rebooted.

Note that you need to be on desktop or notebook to use icloud fix... I was advised that you can't do this from a portable device

But shouldn't they at least acknowledge it? I'm sure they know about it (well by now anyway) so saying they are working on it would be better than letting us try and fix it for ourselves with no information.

Maybe not, but I'm just annoyed.

"I too had a message of demand for $50 from "Oleg Pliss" with a phone number of 5841293189 and an email address of helplock@gmx.com . I have a password on all items and when I went in the message disappeared and there does not appear, at this stage, to be any affect on my iPads or iPhones. Bit disappointed that Apple have not said anything at this stage but then again they may still be asleep in the USA! "

Likely they aren't saying anything because your phone was not hacked.

It was a flash SMS which does not show up in your messaging app.

They were trying to scare you into going to their website do they can infect your computer with virus/malware.

We had one iPhone and two iPads affected. We did not have a passcode on any of them unfortunately. I could turn off lost mode for the iPhone but not the iPads. The computer would not recognise the iPhone as it still said it was in lost mode with passcode even though it showed differently on find my iphone. I was able to delete the iPhone through Find my iPhone, the computer would then recognise the device and I restored from backup. For the iPads I had to turn them both off, then plug into the relevant computer, turned them back on pressing the home key and it would then let me restore them as it bypassed the passcode lock. Hope this helps someone. I also reset my icloud password before I started this process.

We were also woken up at 3:30am by all devices (except our old iPad1) blaring like a fire alarm. I completely powered down everything except my wife's iPhone5 (which I couldn't find, as it turned out to be in the car). This morning all devices are fine, except my wife's iPhone5, which has had the passcode changed. All our devices already had passcodes.

The message on our devices was the same as those already posted.

This morning we've changed the AppleID password we use on all those devices (we use the one account), and have also turned off "Find my iPhone". However, my wife is still unable to get into her phone despite the provided instructions. She tried restoring it via iTunes on our laptop, but it wanted the passcode first. I then wiped the phone via the Find my iPhone website from my work desktop, and that seemed to work, but when she tries to restore it, it still seems to want the passcode first (so she says).

Any ideas?

If you actually read the history of this case this is not a mere flash SMS but an iCloud hack that has used 'Find my iPhone' to lock users out of their own phones. This should not be so easily dismissed as this is huge and worrying news that iCloud has been compromised in some way and Apple should at least acknowledge they are investigating and highlight the fix that is in place. Until they do they are leaving most of their AU and NZ users in the dark to pay the money because they are scared and don't know otherwise know what to do.

If you actually read the history of this case this is not a mere flash SMS but an iCloud hack that has used 'Find my iPhone' to lock users out of their own phones.

Exactly. Any devices unprotected by existing passcodes and linked to compromised iCloud accounts have been locked, with a demand for $ in poor english sent via the Find My Iphone message function. It's not sms.

Just got off the phone from Apple - trying to get the AppleID password changed as we're now locked out having flunked the security questions. She couldn't help, and was giving away nothing re this issue other than a resigned sigh of affirmation, when put to her she was up for a long day.

It is very very unlikely that Apple has been hacked.

Someone will have got a list of emails and passwords from a hack of another very unsecure site in Australia, and tried them all up against iCloud.

Maybe 10% or 20% of people will have used the same email and password on both sites and this is how they got in to iCloud. The devices attached to the account were then set to lost in Find my iPhone, they played the alarm noise and used the send a message function to demand a ransom.

You should make sure you don't use the same passwords in more than one place.