Apple acts as scammers go wild

Apple acts as scammers go wildApple is to ramp up its iCloud security following the fall-out from this week’s stolen explicit pictures row, despite refuting claims it was to blame for the breach.
The move comes as one security firm warned consumers and businesses to be on their guard against fake Apple emails and texts designed to exploit the issue.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that alerts sent to users will now include one when data is restored to a new device. iCloud accounts may been broken into when hackers correctly guessed passwords or through phishing, he said.
Cook added: “When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece. I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That’s not really an engineering thing.”
Meanwhile Symantec has warned of a major upsurge in fraudulent text messages falsely claiming to be from Apple Protection or another privacy or security group within Apple.
“The text claims that an unauthorised attempt to sign in to the users’ iCloud account was detected and they need to respond back with their Apple ID and password or have their account locked out,” Symantec security response manager Satnam Narang said in a blog post.
The objective of both of the email and SMS scams is to try to purloin Apple ID credentials from unsuspecting recipients.
Another scam targets people looking for the private photos of celebs before directing them towards a site supposedly containing a raunchy video clip. In reality, there is no video and the site only tricks people into downloading malware.
“Whether or not iCloud was the point of compromise in this incident, scammers have been interested in stealing these credentials [Apple IDs] for some time,” Symantec added.
UK group Action Fraud has put out an alert about the scam advising recipients not to respond to dodgy emails or contact the senders.

Related stories
The naked truth about online data
Apple blames customers for breach
Breaches ‘everyday occurrences’
Half of eBay users now wary
Marketers shoulder hacking costs
Cyber gang banged up for 30 years
Gang held in Santander hack scam
Only 2% of cops can fight e-crime
Cops ‘don’t care about cyber-crime’
Staffer held over Morrisons breach
Hackers ‘get ugly’ with mega attack