The week before a crucial launch of its new iPhone, Apple Inc said intimate photos of celebrities including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence were leaked online through the apparent hacking of individual iCloud accounts.
Apple rushed to restore confidence in its systems’ security, saying the scandal that also ensnared swimsuit model Kate Upton, actress Kirsten Dunst and possibly dozens more was the result of targeted attacks on accounts storing personal data and not a direct breach of Apple systems.
“We have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet,” Apple said in a statement. “None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find My iPhone.”
The celebrity hacking that came to light over the US Labor Day weekend ranks among the highest-profile public fiascos for Apple in recent years.
The iCloud service allows users to store photos and other content and access it from any Apple device. Security in the cloud has been of paramount concern in past years, but that has not stopped the rapid adoption of services that offer reams of storage and management of data from smartphones and computers.
Regardless of how the leaking of nude celebrity photos actually happened, the timing could not have been worse for Apple as it prepares to launch a new iPhone next week.
It also underscored the longer-term risks for mobile users as smartphones increasingly become the repository for far more sensitive healthcare, banking and personal data.
Some security experts faulted Apple for failing to make its devices and software easier to secure through two-factor authentication, which requires a separate verification code after users log in initially. The process requires several steps and more than rudimentary knowledge of a phone’s workings.
Apple could also do more to advertise that option, they said. Most people do not bother with security measures because of the extra hassle, experts say, and the leading phone makers are partly to blame.
“Making things more private or secure by default instead of having “security options” would go a long way. Most people won’t take those options and they aren’t necessarily advertised as available,” WhiteHat Security Inc’s Threat Research Center senior manager Matt Johansen said. “Most sites with two-factor authentication, you need to go to some very obscure options menu, multiple-clicks deep.”
The inadequacies identified in Apple’s cloud and mobile security are true of other cloud or Internet-storage services, experts said. Official and celebrity Twitter accounts for instance had been routinely hacked.
Apple has dealt with several high-profile public faux pas in past years, including a maps service criticized for lacking important geographic detail and “Antennagate,” when experts exposed how a flaw in the latest iPhone led to dropped calls. Depending on how the hacks were carrid out, this incident could be as damaging to its reputation, if not more.
“This could be a scary time publicly for Apple,” Trend Micro vice president JD Sherry wrote in a Tuesday blogpost. “They haven’t had many, Antennagate and Apple Maps come to mind, and this would most likely trump those.”
The FBI said it is addressing the celebrity-photo hacking, but added that any further comment “would be inappropriate at this time.”
At its upcoming event, Apple is expected to announce the launch of a mobile payments service alongside its iPhone 6.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy