A Hacker Group calling themselves the ‘Turkish Crime Family’ has threatened to wipe millions of iPhones, iPads, iMacs, Smartwatches and other Apple products.
The Turkish Crime Family (That are actually based in London) have told apple that if they do not receive a ‘ransom’ of $100,000 in Itunes gift cards or $75,000 by April 7th, they will go ahead with the remote wipes.
Apple has refused to pay the ransom.
Apple has also stated that they have not detected any breaches in their systems.
However, the hackers sent 54 credentials of Apple users for verification of the threat, which was confirmed to be real. 10 of these credentials belonged to users in the UK. These 10 people confirmed that their credentials were correct, but also that they haven’t changed their password since setting up their iCloud account. This could mean the hacking group have stolen passwords from another site that was hacked and are hoping you use the same passwords.
(Source)
We highly urge you to change your Apple passwords as soon as possible (and definitely before April 7th). Here are some tips to help increase your protection against this attack:
- Make sure your new password is unique, and that you don’t use this password on any other account. – This is because, if hackers can gain access to one password you use multiple times, they can easily gain access to the accounts you share a password with.
- Make sure it is not simplistic. – A simplistic, six letter word such as ‘Window’ can be hacked in an average time of 0.29 milliseconds.
- Use varied characters. – Make sure to use upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
- Set up 2 Factor Authentification. – 2FA adds that next level of security on your accounts to protect your information and data.