iCloud

Apple reportedly patches Find My iPhone vulnerability to hack Apple ID accounts

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 1, 2014

According to The Next Web this morning, Apple has allegedly patched a security hole in the Find My iPhone service which allowed nefarious users to brute-force Apple ID passwords, according to Twitter user @hackappcom who posted a proof of concept titled 'iBrute' to GitHub on Saturday.

This should be good news for celebrities who reported their iCloud accounts being hacked and saw their nude pictures posted online.

As Cody told you yesterday, Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and several other celebrities found themselves in the middle of a major nude photo leak after attackers apparently exploited a vulnerability in Apple’s Find My iPhone service.

Hacker leaks dozens of nude celebrity pics in alleged iCloud hack

Cody Lee ∙ August 31, 2014

Twitter, Reddit and several other social networks are blowing up this evening with talk of a major nude celebrity photo leak. The trove first appeared on 4chan's /b/ thread earlier today, and it includes Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and several others.

The pictures were allegedly retrieved through a vulnerability in Apple's iCloud service, which allowed the celebrities’ phones to be hacked. Thus far, no one has confirmed that iCloud was actually breached, and few details are known about the attack, or the attacker.

New service offers permanent Activation Lock bypass

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2023

Chronic Unlocks has recently started offering a new service which claims to bypass Activation Lock on iOS devices that have been locked. Although the method used to get around the security measure has yet to be detailed, the service can be helpful for people who bought an iOS device that is still tied to its previous owner's Apple ID. But don't expect the company to help you bypass Activation Lock on a stolen device!

Apple updates Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iMovie to improve iCloud compatibility

Sébastien Page ∙ August 21, 2014

Apple just updated several of its applications for both iOS and OS X with the usual "stability improvements and bug fixes", but after looking into it more closely, it seems there is more to the updates than the changelog shows, with apparent iCloud compatibility improvements.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have all been updated for both iOS and OS X, while iMovie has only been updated for OS X so far. All updates show as "stability improvements and bug fixes," except iMovie for Mac, which "includes iCloud compatiblity improvements for iMovie Theater."

If these update look benign on the surface, it seems they do improve iCloud compatibility...

All iCloud services are currently down for some users [resolved]

Sébastien Page ∙ August 21, 2014

According to Apple System Status, all iCloud services are currently down for some users. The outage has been going on for a little over an hour now with no indication of when the service might be restored.

iCloud services appear to be the only services affected by the outage, which again, doesn't affect all users. Other online services such as FaceTime, iMessage, Siri, and the App Stores are currently working just fine.

Update: System Status page now says all services have been restored.

How to delete old iPhone backups

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated December 24, 2018

Manually backing up your iPhone or iPad, or taking advantage of iCloud automatic backups, is the best way to guarantee that you will be able to get all your data back in the event something goes wrong.

Whether you choose to backup via iTunes or iCloud, you might want to delete this backup at some point. Maybe the backup file got corrupted, or maybe you're running out of storage space on your Mac or in iCloud. Or maybe you have an entirely different reason to delete your iPhone or iPad backup file.

Whatever the reason is, we've got you covered. In this post, we will learn how to delete an iPhone backup from a Mac and we'll also see how to delete a backup file from iCloud.

Apple to wipe all CloudKit data on July 22

Timothy Reavis ∙ Updated April 17, 2018

Apple has sent an email to registered developers notifying them of a complete wipe of CloudKit databases. The erase, which is scheduled to take place on July 22nd, is related to the iCloud APIs introduced at WWDC this year and will effect iCloud containers with public databases.

This is the second time Apple is deleting iCloud server data, as the tech giant performed a similar wipe on July 7th in order to upgrade their servers to coincide with the latest beta releases for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.

Here is Apple's full email to developers:

Apple is now encrypting your iCloud emails in transit between providers

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 15, 2014

A month ago, Apple confirmed that it would soon start encrypting iCloud Mail traffic in transit.

As Google's Transparency Report noted at the time, Apple and several major email providers did not properly encrypt email messages sent and received from other providers like Gmail and Yahoo, creating security concerns.

Although Apple only encrypts emails sent between its own iCloud customers, the company appears to have stepped up iCloud Mail security and is now finally protecting your emails from eavesdropping as they travel between various third-party email service providers using end-to-end encryption...

iCloud Mail down for a small number of users for 17 hours now

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 14, 2014

If you use iCloud Mail, you may have noticed by now that your emails are not arriving, or are having difficulties accessing the web interface or your account in Apple's stock iOS Mail app and third-party email clients.

If so, you're among a tiny 0.1 percent of users who've been unable to receive mail for 20 hours and counting, according to Apple's iCloud dashboard on the web...

Apple rolling out two-step verification for iCloud web portal

Cody Lee ∙ June 30, 2014

Apple has apparently begun rolling out a two-step verification system to its iCloud web portal this afternoon. The new system adds an additional layer of security to an area that offers access to web versions of stock Mac and iOS apps like Mail, Contacts and Calendar.

It's not clear if Apple is simply testing the feature with some users or plans to eventually roll it out to all iCloud.com subscribers, but it seems not everyone has access to it yet. Those who do see it, though, say it requires users to enter a special code to access their apps...

Apple updates iWork for iCloud with new features

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 24, 2014

In keeping true to its promise of bringing back most of the missing features pulled from its iWork for iCloud web apps following a major rethinking of the productivity suite, Apple on Tuesday rolled out another refresh to web-based Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps.

Features enabled across all three web productivity apps include tips on how to cut, copy and paste using keyboard shortcuts, the ability to right-click to mask images and suggestions for your most recent screen name when opening a shared document.

Jump past the fold for per-app specifics...

Apple working to encrypt iCloud emails in transit

Joe Rossignol ∙ June 13, 2014

Email encryption is a hot topic right now. A few weeks ago, Google published a report that reveals how much email sent in transit is encrypted and which major providers are taking measures to encrypt their own emails. Then yesterday, the NPR published a more in-depth report (via 9to5Mac) that looks at how well major email providers in the United States are doing at protecting the data of users online.

As it turns out, Apple was among several major email providers failing to properly encrypt its emails sent and received from other providers like Gmail and Yahoo. Following the report, however, the iPhone maker reached out to NPR to confirm that it will be working on encrypting its emails in transit. The company says the change will occur "soon," but no timeline was provided…