“The 4chan leak of nude celebrity photos, allegedly stolen via Apple’s iCloud, shows your data are never fully secure,” Deutsche Welle reports. “But with an iPhone payment feature expected to launch, it’s time see what you can do.”
“Rumor suggests – and when it comes to Apple, rumors are an acknowledged fine art – Apple has made agreements with leading credit card financial services,” DW reports. “But the question is: how secure is that? Will it become another piece of technology that we rely on, but which is easily hacked?”
“This past Monday a gang of hackers released nude photos of celebrities, which they had allegedly spent years harvesting from iCloud accounts, and trading elsewhere online,” DW reports. “It appears the hackers were able to gain access to individual accounts simply by figuring out the passwords and answers to security questions. Apple says their systems have not been compromised – they say this was a targeted attack on certain celebrity accounts.”
“Most important: take good care of your passwords… [and] put a little more effort into the passwords you choose,” DW reports. “Cyber security researcher Dr. Sandro Gaycken of the Freie Universität Berlin advises it is best not to use names or birth dates as passwords or as part of passwords – ‘and no dog names either. It is best not to use words out of a dictionary but instead mix up numbers, letters and additional characters to creatively make up artificial, non-existing words. And yes, it is a lot of work. But try to come up with a new password for every new account you create.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Use two-step verification for Apple ID to keep your personal information as secure as possible. More info here.
Always use unique passwords, do not reuse passwords for different services, and use Apple’s Keychain Access and iCloud Keychain to create and manage your passwords. When used properly, this system works like a dream.