How iPhone owners can defend themselves against hackers

Positive Technologies experts explain how hackers can gain access to devices, and what iPhone owners should do to stay safe.

Although nowadays there is particular mention of the possibility of hacking iCloud, the problem actually concerns all vendors who use Cloud Backup solutions for mobile devices. Hackers’ interest in Apple products is mainly due to the popularity of these devices.

Hackers are interested in Cloud services, used to back up mobile device storage, because accessing a device backup copy means accessing all its contacts, business information, private mail, and photos and videos. With this information, a hacker can do many things. To avoid becoming victims, owners of Apple devices should change their iCloud password. Positive Technologies experts advise using strong, different passwords for different logins and, most importantly, changing them often.

It is also important to consider that, to access a user’s account, hackers often infect devices with malicious software (and not just mobile devices; to obtain user credentials, it is enough to gain control of the PC from which the user accesses iCloud): hackers also use phishing and social engineering techniques, attempt password dictionary attacks, or use the same passwords that the user has used elsewhere (in fact, many users employ only one password to access multiple portals).

Hacking an account allows criminals to access a device’s backup copy. Although data is encrypted in a Cloud database, some mobile device developers make mistakes during the protection implementation phase. In these cases, it is relatively easy for hackers to obtain an encryption key and recover the data. But even when it is not possible to decrypt the data, there are always other ways: for example, by blocking the device (as if it were lost by the owner) and then blackmailing the owner.

According to research by Positive Technologies experts, the problem of weak passwords is widespread not only among individual users but also among companies. 53% of attacks that allowed hackers to access internal resources were carried out using dictionary passwords. This type of vulnerability was the most common, according to a 2014 report by the company. In 2015, however, 78% of systems revealed this vulnerability on a network perimeter. All these systems had privileged users with weak passwords. 44% of companies, on the other hand, used dictionary passwords to access public web applications.

The most common vulnerability in internal networks turned out to be the use of weak passwords (100%). Furthermore, most systems (91%) revealed weak passwords for privileged user accounts. All systems showed defects in the protocol that redirects and reroutes network traffic. Insufficient protection of privileged accounts and defects in antivirus protection are still widespread in companies’ internal networks: such vulnerabilities were detected in 91% of the systems.

Pubblicato in Guides & Tutorials