After 40 hours of relentless investigation in trying to track down hackers of celebrity photographs, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) eventually released the statement that its two systems that had been held guilty, namely iCloud and ‘Find My iPhone’ did not show any sign of having been breached. Instead, the company describes these attacksas being the result of a concerted effort to target particular celebrity accounts by employing several combinations of user names, passwords and in some cases even security questions.
Moving on, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has appealed to its users to put a strong password to protect personal accounts and follow it up with the activation of two-step verification process. Given that the sources of photos turned out to be the users’ iPhones, what became apparent was that the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature lacked brute-force protection. This explained why it was vulnerable to hackers who kept on guessing passwords indefinitely and were not apprehended by the system to be locked out.
The lesson from this incident not just for celebrities but for users hailing from any strata is best expressed by Christopher Boyd of Malawarebytes Labs –
“It is a stark reminder of the potential consequences of having sensitive material lying around in the cloud. For anything sensitive, people should consider storing this data offline on encrypted external hard drives. The only real way to keep sensitive data secure is not put it online in the first place.”
Although celebrities have been forthright and vocal in condemning this breach of privacy, the hacker or group of hackers is yet to be traced and are likely to be convicted for the crime.
However, for Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), the damage has been done, particularly in light of its new release being set for launch on 9th September, 2014. With the new gadget being touted as a device fit for monitoring health as also financial transactions, the big question that hangs in the air is whether or not it will be secure enough to protect sensitive data.
People have already pointed out Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s incompetency in having been unable to detect logging-in attempts when the break-in was taking place and also in failing to educate its users on the importance of two-factor authentication. Marc Maiffret has brushed it off by saying –
“Every great innovation is convenient but also a big opportunity for the bad guys in the world.”
But this still leaves an uphill task ahead of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) to convince its users that its system could be trusted with sensitive data.
This article has been written by Vinita Basu.
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