“Owners of Apple devices across Australia are having them digitally held for ransom by hackers demanding payment before they will relinquish control,” Ben Grubb reports for Fairfax Media. “iPad, iPhone and Mac owners in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria have reported having their devices held hostage.”
“One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud ‘lost phone’ message that said ‘Oleg Pliss’ had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked,” Grubb reports. “It is likely hackers are using the unusual name as a front to get money from people. A real Oleg Pliss is a software engineer at tech company Oracle. A similar name is listed on LinkedIN as a banking professional in Ukraine, while there are others in Russia.”
“Users who have a passcode on their device appear to be able to unlock it after the hacker has sent them the message demanding payment, but those who had not set a passcode are unable to,” Grubb reports. “A PayPal spokesman said there was no PayPal account linked to the email address the hacker used. The spokesman added that any money that may have been sent by victims would be refunded.”
“Comment is being sought from Apple. A Telstra spokesman said the telco was aware of the reports and had referred the matter to Apple,” Grubb reports. “Vodafone said no customers had reported the issue to its support centre. Optus said if customers had any questions about their Apple devices, they ‘should speak directly to Apple.’ The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which runs the federal government’s Scam Watch website, said only one user had reported the issue to it so far.”
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