{"id":24232,"date":"2019-02-08T16:09:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=24232"},"modified":"2019-02-08T16:09:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:09:48","slug":"how-hackers-and-scammers-break-into-icloud-locked-iphones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/08\/how-hackers-and-scammers-break-into-icloud-locked-iphones\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hackers and Scammers Break into iCloud-Locked iPhones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/8xyq8v\/how-to-unlock-icloud-stolen-iphone\">Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/8xyq8v\/how-to-unlock-icloud-stolen-iphone\">\n<p>The iCloud security feature has likely cut down on the number of iPhones that have been stolen, but enterprising criminals have found ways to remove iCloud in order to resell devices. To do this, they phish the phone&rsquo;s original owners, or scam employees at Apple Stores, which have the ability to override iCloud locks. Thieves, coders, and hackers participate in an underground industry designed to remove a user&rsquo;s iCloud account from a phone so that they can then be resold.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>In practice, &ldquo;iCloud unlock&rdquo; as it&rsquo;s often called, is a scheme that involves a complex supply chain of different scams and cybercriminals. These include using fake receipts and invoices to trick Apple into believing they&rsquo;re the legitimate owner of the phone, using databases that look up information on iPhones, and social engineering at Apple Stores. There are even custom phishing kits for sale online designed to steal iCloud passwords from a phone&rsquo;s original owner.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I wish that they would just use iCloud lock for devices that are reported lost or stolen,&rdquo; Justin Carroll, owner of FruitFixed, an independent smartphone repair shop in Virginia, told Motherboard. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve seen it hundreds of times&mdash;people bring in perfectly working and capable phones that have nothing wrong with them and we can&rsquo;t do anything for them. We&rsquo;ve even had it happen to us, where we give a loaner phone to a customer, they don&rsquo;t remove iCloud, they leave the store, and we have an expensive paperweight. That&rsquo;s incredibly frustrating.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler: The iCloud security feature has likely cut down on the number of iPhones that have been stolen, but enterprising criminals have found ways to remove iCloud in order to resell devices. To do this, they phish the phone&rsquo;s original owners, or scam employees at Apple Stores, which have the ability [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-02-08T21:09:51Z","apple_news_api_id":"4773cdf0-4309-4157-8d55-da54161d12cf","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-02-08T21:09:52Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AR3PN8EMJQVeNVdpUFh0Szw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16,31,1610,85,1200,48],"class_list":["post-24232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-icloud","tag-ios","tag-ios-12","tag-iphone","tag-phishing","tag-security"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24233,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24232\/revisions\/24233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}