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

Close
veritylikestea

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

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 7 of 32 last Next

  • by georgie81,

    georgie81 georgie81 May 26, 2014 3:50 PM in response to lilmky2
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 3:50 PM in response to lilmky2

    yep and its still not working..rang telstra and they said it is an apple issue and are awaitng a press release and solution

  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 3:54 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 3:54 PM in response to analogue cheese

    solved - the solution suggested via lilmky2's link worked for the hijacked iPad.  Now to the iPhone. 

     

    Cheers.

  • by analogue cheese,

    analogue cheese analogue cheese May 26, 2014 3:57 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 26, 2014 3:57 PM in response to analogue cheese

    to clarify, in my case the iPad still 'spoke' to itunes.  Backed the iPad up, then put it into restore mode:

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414

     

    Restored from the backup, and the iPad seems now to be working fine.  Made sure, of course, that a passcode has been installed!

  • by dal60y,

    dal60y dal60y May 26, 2014 4:28 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:28 PM in response to veritylikestea

    why cant i just log into icloud and remove the passcode?

  • by thomas_r.,

    thomas_r. thomas_r. May 26, 2014 4:35 PM in response to analogue cheese
    Level 7 (30,944 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2014 4:35 PM in response to analogue cheese

    Okay, so at least two people are using non-local e-mail accounts, so that shoots that theory.

     

    How about internet service providers (ISPs)? I know nothing about the available providers in that part of the world, but if everyone is using the same ISP, this could be the result of a domain name server hack. A domain name server (DNS) is a server used to convert a human-readable address (www.apple.com) into a numeric IP address (17.172.224.47). If a DNS gets "poisoned," it can contain entries that map the human-readable address to a malicious IP address.

     

    If this happened with a major ISPs DNS in that part of the world, affected users who provided a username and password on what they thought was Apple's site may actually have provided it to hackers. It may be a good idea to use an alternate DNS for the next few days, just in case, until the cause is determined. Try the OpenDNS servers or Google DNS servers.

  • by pogster,

    pogster pogster May 26, 2014 4:40 PM in response to dal60y
    Level 4 (2,296 points)
    Apple Watch
    May 26, 2014 4:40 PM in response to dal60y

    dal60y wrote:

     

    why cant i just log into icloud and remove the passcode?

     

    Because you don't know what passcode the hacker used. Or do you?

  • by deskokat,

    deskokat deskokat May 26, 2014 4:41 PM in response to thomas_r.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:41 PM in response to thomas_r.

    Telstra - Bigpond

  • by kazza62,

    kazza62 kazza62 May 26, 2014 4:44 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:44 PM in response to veritylikestea

    I have an iphone too and to this minute has remained inaffected but should i turn off the 'find my phone' feature to protect me from being hacked?

  • by pogster,

    pogster pogster May 26, 2014 4:48 PM in response to kazza62
    Level 4 (2,296 points)
    Apple Watch
    May 26, 2014 4:48 PM in response to kazza62

    kazza62 wrote:

     

    I have an iphone too and to this minute has remained inaffected but should i turn off the 'find my phone' feature to protect me from being hacked?

    No, I would leave it on, but change your iCloud password with a strong password and enable passlock on your iPhone.

  • by lilmky2,

    lilmky2 lilmky2 May 26, 2014 4:52 PM in response to veritylikestea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:52 PM in response to veritylikestea

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

     

    I did but don't now. That password has been retired.

  • by dal60y,

    dal60y dal60y May 26, 2014 4:57 PM in response to pogster
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:57 PM in response to pogster

    no i dont know the password the hacker used.

     

    i dont use the same password for ebay and have changed it to another different password since recieving that warning from ebay

     

    using telstra - bigpond

     

    never used icloud, didnt even realise i had set it up

  • by kazza62,

    kazza62 kazza62 May 26, 2014 4:56 PM in response to pogster
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:56 PM in response to pogster

    Thanks, I have a passlock on my phone all time and I consider my icloud password a strong one anyway, so I should stay safe

  • by Elizarose777,

    Elizarose777 Elizarose777 May 26, 2014 4:58 PM in response to dal60y
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:58 PM in response to dal60y

    Husband has spent a fair while on phone to apple support this morning so they are aware of the situation. iPhone still not working though, expecting a call back in an hour to resolve this. Pretty sure it's not linked to email providers or ISP as we are on satellite broadband here.

  • by Hansel.,

    Hansel. Hansel. May 26, 2014 5:01 PM in response to amberoonie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:01 PM in response to amberoonie

    I had a slightly different experience.

     

    I woke up at about 3am to the phone making odd beeping noises and noticed that the screen and bluetooth were on (I never use bluetooth). On closer inspection "they" had a bunch of incognito windows open in Chrme with an attempt to reset my Amazn password, along with just a bunch of garbage sites. They'd also replied to a few (noreply) email addresses with just garbage (eg, CzTwice vs ; ).

    Seems like they visited a bunch of sites from my history, but as far as I can tell they didn't do anything actually useful to them (as far as I can tell). I've since reset the majority of my passwords and put a lock code on the phone.

    Whether it's the same hack that everyone else in here has been caught with (I'm in Melbourne), and I just caught them mid way through the act, I don't know, but either way there's a lot of hacking going on!

  • by slcurtis,

    slcurtis slcurtis May 26, 2014 5:01 PM in response to Elizarose777
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 5:01 PM in response to Elizarose777

    I'm off to apple store this morning, bringing my laptop, iphone and ipad. I'm not leaving until they fix it... hopefully in an hour apple will have figured it out.

first Previous Page 7 of 32 last Next