veritylikestea
Level 1 (1 points)

Q: My devices have been hacked. What do I do?

i was using my ipad a short while ago when suddenly it locked itself, and was askiwhich I'd never previously set up. I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by 'Oleg Pliss' and he/she/they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)hotmail.com) to return them to me.

 

I have no idea how this has happened. I am not aware of having been exposed to malware or anything else, although i did recently purchase some new apps - perhaps one of these has something to do with it? I don't know. I am not sure what avenue has been used to reach my devices - I'm about to use my husband's laptop to check through some of my accounts (gmail, etc) and see if there is any clue there.

 

Has this happened to anyone else? What can or should I do? Many thanks

iPhone 5

Posted on May 26, 2014 4:57 AM

by georz,Solvedanswer
georz georz
Level 1 (10 points)
A:

I had the same problem originally. This is what I was told to do (and did) over the phone with applecare support.

 

Turn off your phone.

Plug your cable into the computer and have itunes up (do not plug into the phone yet)

Press and hold the home key on your off phone (I did mine for about 10 seconds). If nothing happens, plug in the cable into your phone (keep holding the home key)

What you want to see come up is the picture of itunes and cable on the front of the phone

Your itunes should then recognise the phone as an unidentified phone

Select restore factory settings (it should down load some software) ~15 mins and automatically install

The phone should go through some of the standard reset screens (usually black screen with apple icon and loading bar)

You will be prompted to restore the phone.... do this from itunes not the phone

 

Throughout this process you must not let the phone or computer go into sleep mode.... and don't disconnect.

 

I had the same issue with the lock screen but it was related to sim card once I did the restore.

 

I had to set the erase from icloud website, but that didn't originally work as it requires connection to the internet for it to apply, hence plugging it into the computer.

 

I accidentally started setting up my phone via the phone and got stuck on the sim card lock screen so had to do it from scratch again and this time via itunes and all good. Hope that helps

Posted on May 26, 2014 6:37 PM

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veritylikestea

Q: My devices have been hacked. What do I do?

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  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 5:08 PM in response to slcurtis
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:08 PM in response to slcurtis

    iPad fixed, iPhone now fixed too - restored each from recent backups. Can't change the AppleID password as DW can't remember her security questions .  Waiting for Apple to call on that front - have in the meantime put passcodes on both devices and turned 'find my iphone/ipad' off on both.  Hopefully we're sorted.  Will implement two step authentication too.

     

    Good luck to all affected!

  • by thomas_r.,

    thomas_r. thomas_r. May 26, 2014 5:16 PM in response to lilmky2
    Level 7 (30,944 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2014 5:16 PM in response to lilmky2

    lilmky2 wrote:

     

    How many use the same password that they used on Ebay? Just wondering if that breach caused this one?

     

    Not likely, as this breach seems to only be affecting Australians and New Zealanders, as far as I know.

  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 5:17 PM in response to thomas_r.
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:17 PM in response to thomas_r.

    yes that's not an issue in our case - no ebay account.

  • by slcurtis,

    slcurtis slcurtis May 26, 2014 5:19 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:19 PM in response to analogue cheese

    analogue cheese wrote:

     

    iPad fixed, iPhone now fixed too - restored each from recent backups. Can't change the AppleID password as DW can't remember her security questions .  Waiting for Apple to call on that front - have in the meantime put passcodes on both devices and turned 'find my iphone/ipad' off on both.  Hopefully we're sorted.  Will implement two step authentication too.

     

    Good luck to all affected!

     

    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.

  • by bobels,

    bobels bobels May 26, 2014 5:20 PM in response to Shleighbo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:20 PM in response to Shleighbo

    My take on this is it's iCloud thats been hacked, not your device. By hacking iCloud they take control, maybe in the same way you could, legitimately.

  • by Kyle4812,

    Kyle4812 Kyle4812 May 26, 2014 5:21 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:21 PM in response to veritylikestea

    Be careful with icloud and erasing,

    A user who received this hack has erased their iphone from iCloud after seeing it set in lost mode and it appears as though its also erased the iphones icloud backup?

    Does this sound right, they believe that when erasing the iphone from icloud it did not state anything about deleting backups, just erasing the phone itself.

     

    Now they are unable to restore the device and have to start fresh,

    Can anyone back this up ?

  • by lilmky2,

    lilmky2 lilmky2 May 26, 2014 5:23 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:23 PM in response to veritylikestea

    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

  • by veritylikestea,

    veritylikestea veritylikestea May 26, 2014 5:24 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 1 (1 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:24 PM in response to analogue cheese

    My ebay pasword is quite different and unconnected with my apple account in any way that I'm aware of, I use gmail and my ISPs are Telstra (home) and Virgin (mobile) so...

     

    Haven't been to the apple store yet, am not 100% certain they will be able to do any better than the advice im getting here so I'll probably just do a backup and restore once I can get home again (today is turning out to be a right mess).

  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 5:25 PM in response to slcurtis
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:25 PM in response to slcurtis

    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.

  • by veritylikestea,

    veritylikestea veritylikestea May 26, 2014 5:26 PM in response to lilmky2
    Level 1 (1 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:26 PM in response to lilmky2

    I'm having trouble getting my devices out of lost mode though, my ipad is wifi only and it no longer has a signal on our home network and I am not sure how to fix that, obviously, right now. Will see how I go once I can try the backup and restore...

  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 5:30 PM in response to lilmky2
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:30 PM in response to lilmky2

    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. 

  • by poppyp_z,

    poppyp_z poppyp_z May 26, 2014 5:31 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:31 PM in response to veritylikestea

    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!

  • by poppyp_z,

    poppyp_z poppyp_z May 26, 2014 5:35 PM in response to poppyp_z
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:35 PM in response to poppyp_z

    Oh and for security reasons for now keep Find my iPhone turned off!

  • by pogster,

    pogster pogster May 26, 2014 5:40 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 4 (2,296 points)
    Apple Watch
    May 26, 2014 5:40 PM in response to analogue cheese

    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.

  • by georz,

    georz georz May 26, 2014 5:42 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:42 PM in response to veritylikestea

    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

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