Signs your Apple ID has been compromised

1. Macbook Getting Hacked
2. Macs Getting Hacked Images
3. Macs Getting Hacked Photos

How To Stop Your iPhone, iPad or Mac Getting Hacked Security Tips. Bijay Pokharel, March 31, 2019 1 2 min read. From time-to-time Apple is alerted to security issues and vulnerabilities by researchers. The company usually reacts pretty promptly, issuing a software update for Macs, iPad and iPhones. Jun 03, 2015  Some Apple Macs have a particularly terrible flaw that lets hackers sneak in and remain undetected, a security researcher has found. It means a hacker could - from far away.

Your Apple ID might be compromised if you receive an account notification from Apple for a change you didn't make, or if you notice account details or changes you don’t recognize. For example:

• You receive an email or notification that your Apple ID was used to sign in to a device you don't recognize or did not sign in to recently (for example, 'Your Apple ID was used to sign in to iCloud on a Windows PC').
• You receive a confirmation email from Apple that your Apple ID password was changed or your account information was updated, but you don’t remember making any changes.
• Your device was locked or placed in Lost Mode by someone other than you.
• You see messages you didn't send, or items you didn’t delete.
• You see charges or notices for purchases that you didn't make. Learn what to do if you see an unfamiliar iTunes Store or App Store charge on your credit or debit card statement.
• Your password no longer works, or it might have been changed or locked.
• You don't recognize some or all of your account details.

If you received an email, text message, or phone call that you're not sure is valid or you think might be phishing, here are some tips to help determine its legitimacy.

Gain control of your Apple ID

If you think your Apple ID is compromised, use these steps to gain control of it and review your account information:

1. Sign in to your Apple ID account page. If you can't sign in or you receive a message that the account is locked when you try to sign in, try to reset or unlock your account.
2. Change your Apple ID password and choose a strong password.
3. Review all the personal and security information in your account. Update any information that isn't correct or that you don’t recognize, including:
   • Your name.
   • Your primary Apple ID email address.* If you need to change your email address, update the features and services that you use with Apple ID, so that each one is using your updated Apple ID.
   • All alternate email addresses, rescue email addresses, and phone numbers.
   • The devices that are associated with your Apple ID, if you've already set up two-factor authentication.
   • Security questions and answers. If you think they might be easy to guess, you should change your security questions.
4. Check with your email address* provider to make sure that you control every email address associated with your Apple ID. If you don't control the email addresses associated with the Apple ID, you should change the password for the email address or use a different email address.
5. Set up two-factor authentication for your Apple ID. This additional security feature is designed to prevent anyone from accessing your account, even if they know your password.

* In China mainland and India, you can use your phone number as your Apple ID.

If you completed the steps above and think your account might still be compromised, contact Apple Support.

Know which Apple ID is signed in to your device

If you're signed in on your device with an Apple ID that you don't recognize, use these steps to sign out, then back in with a different Apple ID. To make sure that you're signed in to Apple IDs that only you control or trust, you can check the following settings on each of your devices:

iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

• Settings > [your name]
• Settings > [your name] > iTunes & App Store
• Settings > Messages > Send & Receive
• Settings > FaceTime

Mac:

• System Preferences > Apple ID
• System Preferences > Internet Accounts
• Messages > Preferences > Accounts
• Facetime > Preferences > Settings
• Mail > Preferences > Accounts
• Calendar > Preferences > Accounts

You should also check iCloud for Windows, your AirPort Time Capsule or other AirPort Base Station, and your Apple TV (for iCloud Photos or Home Sharing).

Make sure your Apple ID is secure

Because you use your Apple ID for so many Apple products and services, you should make sure that your Apple ID is as secure as possible. You should be the only person who knows your password and can sign in with your Apple ID. If someone you don’t know or don’t trust can sign in with your Apple ID, your account is not secure.

Your Apple ID might not be secure for the following reasons:

• Someone else created an Apple ID on your behalf, or you’re using an Apple ID that was already signed in when you received your device.
• You’re sharing an Apple ID with family or friends. Your Apple ID is your personal account. If you want to share purchases with a family member, use Family Sharing. With Family Sharing, you can share a calendar, photos, reminders, and more without sharing your Apple ID.
• You don’t recognize the Apple ID that is signed in on your device.
• You shared your password with someone else intentionally or unintentionally. For example, someone else selected your password for you, you told someone your password, or you entered your password on a phishing site.
• You don't have control of the email address or phone number associated with your Apple ID.
• Your password is weak or is compromised.
• You share your devices with someone else, your devices are not protected by a passcode, or your passcode is easy to guess.

If any of the above are true, you should reset your password as soon as possible and review your account information.

Do you think that your Mac was hacked? Do you feel that someone or something is spying on you when you are watching YouTube, or when your Mac is left unattended at home?

There are many ways how a human or a program can get on your computer and do harm to you and your privacy:

• It could be a spyware, a malicious hacker, or someone you know, such as a parent, a spouse, a friend.
• They can access your photos, videos, and emails
• They can take embarrassing pictures of you using a webcam
• They can listen and record your conversations
• They can monitor your browsing history
• They can use your computer to mine Bitcoins
• They can encrypt everything on your disk and then ask for a ransom

Computers have never been safe, and now when we rely so much on them, it is extremely important to protect ourselves from malicious actors.

This topic is too broad to fit into one blog post, so I am writing mini-series, which will help you to minimize the impact and secure your Mac.

Macbook Getting Hacked

Signs That Your Mac Was hacked

If you are reading this post, chances are you noticed something unusual is happening on your Mac. Sometimes you have a hunch, but you can’t explain it. However, most of those signs can be explained by reasons other than malware or hackers. So, let’s review the major signs.

Mac suddenly became slow for no apparent reasons

I’ve been developing commercial software for more than twenty years. There were many times when I received a call from the customer complaining that their computers, servers, programs are slow.

Every time I am getting a call, the first thing I ask if they did something before they noticed the problem. Do you know how many times they admitted that they changed something? You guessed it, zero. How many times did customers cause the problem? Almost always.

Following are some of the reasons why Mac can be slow:

• There is a virus or other malware
• Not enough disk space on Mac
• New OS was installed
• Hardware failure

Mac is using more Internet than usual

This one is harder to detect now than before. We used to have limits on how much Internet bandwidth we could use. Today, when many people have unlimited data with cable, you may not even know that something is happening.

However, if you are on a limited plan, and you see a significant increase in data consumption (more than 25% more), it’s time to investigate.

The reasons could be the following:

• Your Mac is being used as a bot by hackers
• There is a virus or other malware
• Your little one grew up and now watching YouTube all day on your computer
• New OS was installed
• Youtube and other web sites are taking forever to load

Similar to the previous sign, problems with the Internet could be a sign pointing to a virus or adware affecting the browser. Or it could be a new browser update. Or maybe the system became unstable.

Programs crashing more often

Did you notice that apps getting stuck and eventually crashing? Very often, it’s a sign of malware. Additional reasons for frequent app crashes are the following:

• Lack of memory (RAM)
• Lack of disk space
• Temporary system instability
• Hardware failure
• Unusual pop-ups in the browser

This is something we all have seen. You download an app from the Internet and seems like it was a legit software. But little did you know a good app was bundled with bloatware.

Usually, the result is that your default search engine gets changed from Google to Yahoo, the home page changes, and there are additional icons in the browser toolbar. But there could be other issues such as adware.

Adware is trying to redirect you to other sites, not related to what are you searching for. Their goal is direct traffic to certain sites. More traffic, more money they get. So, they litter your screen with pop-up, hoping that you can click and open the site you don’t want.

New files appear or old files disappear

Malware often creates new files with cryptic names. For instance, ransomware encrypts the files on your disk and renames them. However, there could be more innocent explanations.

For instance, if you can’t find a file, it does not necessarily mean that it was deleted by malware or someone who logged in on your computer remotely. Maybe, you just can’t remember that you deleted the file or the folder. In this case, first, check Trash on Mac.

If you still can’t find what you need, check my post about finding any files. I guarantee, if the file is still on your Mac after reading my post, you will be able to locate it.

How To Tell If Mac Was Hacked

First, scan your Mac with an antimalware solution. Next, turn off remote desktop and screen sharing features to make sure that nobody can connect to your Mac remotely. Verify that there are no keyloggers. Finally, eliminate reasons unrelated to hacking: reboot Mac, perform NVRAM/PRAM reset, check if there is enough space on the startup disk. If possible, visit the Apple Genius Bar for advice.

Now, let’s go over all the above in detail.

Scan Mac for viruses

I recently called Apple Support and complained about the slowness of my MacBook Pro. I could’ve solved the problem myself, but I just wanted how much would it cost for Apple to perform diagnostics on a 5-year old MacBook.

Since I don’t have AppleCare for my Mac, I thought that they would charge me something. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t charged for anything.

So, when I called, the first thing the Apple advisor made me do is to install the Malwarebytes app.

While Malwarebytes is a solid recommendation for scanning, it is not the best. In fact, I stopped recommending it to any Mac user after the test I performed myself recently.

I tested a dozen of antimalware product and only one detected 100% of 117 malware samples I intentionally downloaded on my MacBook. So, if you need a recommendation on a good antivirus check it here.

Macs Getting Hacked Images

Tighten up access to your Mac

Programs are not the only threat out there. People sometimes can be even more harmful. There are several ways for someone to spy after you.

One is via remote desktop. Maybe you had experience connecting to servers or other Windows machines at work by remote desktop connection. Macs, even MacBooks, also allow such connections.

Also, it is possible to share the screen of your laptop. While it’s a useful feature, if you mean it, it’s not so good if someone’s using it when you are not aware.

And finally, since macOS has UNIX roots, as any UNIX like the operating system, it can be controlled via SSH protocol. Anyone with access can do pretty much anything on your Mac, and you wouldn’t even know.

If all of the above sounds complicated, don’t worry. I wrote a very detailed post on a topic of remote access to your Mac (https://macmyths.com/how-to-tell-if-someone-is-remotely-accessing-your-mac/). All you need is to go over the post and follow the simple steps outlined there.

Mac keyloggers

For a long time, I thought that all keyloggers could do to record keyboard strokes. Imagine my shock when I started working on my post about keyloggers.

Did you know that a new generation of keyloggers can do screenshots every 5 seconds, or record your messages and social media chats? And they can upload the collected information to the cloud.

And the worst part they are freely available for anyone to purchase!

To find out how one can identify a keylogger on Mac I installed 5 most popular apps on my laptop. They completely trashed my system, but luckily I had backups, so I was able to recover my MacBook.

Things to try if no virus found

While you are maybe suspecting something bad happening on your computer, it very well may be a normal condition.

Things to try before starting panicking:

Reboot

Sometimes glitches in software can make the current state of your system unstable. A reboot is still a remedy for many problems. You can either restart or shutdown and start again. The effect will be the same.

NVRAM/PRAM reset

Macs historically have a little memory cell where they store some information needed for many Mac peripherals to work. Surprisingly, this area gets corrupt pretty often. Fortunately, there is a very simple fix – reset NVRAM/PRAM and SMC.

Apple has very good instructions on how to perform these tasks.

What they don’t tell is that you have to reset at 2-3 times in a row for a fix to work. I found out this in the school of hard knocks so that you don’t need to.

Clear some space on disk

Lack of space on your startup disk may cause all kinds of issues: app slowdown, app crashes, high CPU usage, and MacBook overheating. Sometimes this may lead you to suspect that your Mac was hacked.

So, first, check how much storage you have left. And if it is not enough, you can either spend money on getting software that helps to clean your disk or read my article on free cleaning tips: How Do I Free Up Disk Space On My Mac Without Software.

New operating system

Apple releases a new version of macOS every year. While they do everything they can to produce quality software, bugs still happen.

For instance, after the recent iOS update on my iPhone, my podcast app starts freezing every time I pause. I still didn’t find why it is happening because I am too lazy busy.

In the case of the issue on hand, if you had a recent OS update, take time to investigate if the issues you are noticing are common for the release.

Check for hardware failure

Macs are very dependable, and they can serve for many years. However, any hardware gradually fails. For example, a failing disk causes unexplained app crashes. Failed RAM will prevent the computer from starting.

There is a good article on the Apple web site about running hardware diagnostics. Try and see what it will report.

Visit Apple Genius Bar

If you have an Apple store nearby, definitely check them out. On several occasions, I had to contact them, they helped me for free. If there is a fee for diagnostics, they should tell you upfront, so you can decide if it’s worth it for you or not.

5 Things To Do If Your Mac Was Hacked

So, you did everything I told you, and you found out that either someone spying or if there was malware on your Mac. There are several things you have to do immediately.

Change passwords

I know it could be painful to change all passwords. I have accounts on hundreds of web sites, and there is no way I could remember all of them. Well, this is not what I am suggesting.

You have to change passwords on the most important sites:

• Your primary email account. The one that is linked to your bank accounts.
• Bank and credit card accounts
• Work email password
• Apple ID and iCloud passwords (note, they are not the same)

Macs Getting Hacked Photos

If you are using one password for all sites, consider using 1Password utility.

Check bank statements

It never hurts to go over your bank statements (if you have any) once a while. If you notice some suspicious activity, then do a little research. But don’t panic right away if you don’t recognize a charge.

Almost every once, when I check my credit card statements, I see one or more charges which I don’t remember doing. However, after 5 minutes or so, I remember what it was.

Check credit report

Everyone in the U.S. has a right to get a free credit report once a year. Since there are three main agencies, you can get a free report three times a year (one from each agency). Search for “Annual Credit Report” in Google, but be careful to skip some ads and use the legit site.

Turn on Two-Factor Authentication

If you didn’t do this yet, turn on two-factor authentication on main sites: email, any money sites, etc. It’s a little bit inconvenient, but it’s the best way to prevent hackers from stealing your data.

What’s Next?

I hope I gave you some high-level information you needed in case if you think that your computer was hacked. Now, I suggest to check the articles I mentioned above in the following order, so you know how to deal with the problems outlined:

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