I was initially going to write about something else this week, but  I couldn’t resist this headline: “China Is Hacking Its Own Citizens' iCloud Accounts.”   

The attack coincides with the iPhone 6 and 6 plus release in China.  China has previously launched attacks against their citizens’ Google and Yahoo accounts, but those attacks only resulted in the government being able to see what was accessed.  This new attack on Apple  is different though. Instead of just seeing what was access, the Chinese government is attempting to gain  the username and password for individuals utilizing iCloud. It wasn’t the idea of a government hacking its own citizens that caught my attention, it was the fact that I am absolutely not at all surprised that China is doing this. What does surprise me is that this headline didn’t show up before now. I would have guessed China was trying to crack into the iCloud years ago.   (I still suspect that this might be the case, and I doubt they are the only company involved in this kind of activity)

If they are successful in their attack, it will give them access to people’s pictures, documents, messages, etc. It  would be quite possible for the government to use this kind of information to build a case against an individual.  

It could be a criminal who successfully launches an attack against a company who acquires personal information, or it could be a government.  The bottom line here is that there really is no such thing as privacy anymore.

O’Toole, J. (2014). China Is Hacking Its Own Citizens' iCloud Accounts. Retrieved from http://
money.cnn.com/2014/10/21/technology/security/china-icloud/index.html.