iPhone hack may have exposed some of your personal information

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Users of iPhones who have shared information, like WiFi passwords, photos or sensitive personal and financial information may be compromised.

Paul Sems is a lead at TrustedSec, a Strongsville based information technology security consulting company.

“What we’re seeing in this attack is they’re decrypting information you think is secure,” Sems said,

The attackers were discovered by Google researchers and has been ongoing since the advent of the iPhone 5 according to Sems.

The hackers targeted messaging services, like iMessage, Gmail, WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger. The information was obtained through a group of infected websites.

“Just because the iPhone is one of the more secure devices out there that doesn’t mean you can do nefarious things with it and get away without having any risk,” Sems said.

Apple realized the problem, according to Google researchers in February, and an IOS update they related to memory corruption solved the problem.

Sems contends that is reason enough to always apply the IOS updates.

“We understand that there is always a risk of breaking an old app that you have but the other side of it is sharing all of your information,” he said.

It’s no surprise that hackers are targeting phones.

“It’s rare to have some of my family members even touch a computer, they’re on the iPad or iPhone or an android device, they don’t use the computer so yes, that’s where the gold is.”

The hackers obtained the information through a group of targeted websites.

Copyright 2019 WOIO. All rights reserved.