The Chinese government is currently staging an attack on Apple’s iCloud, according to Internet censorship monitor Greatfire.org. The report claims that this main-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is an attempt to gain access to the private information of Chinese citizens, including texts, pictures and contacts. The attack coincides with the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China.
DON’T MISS: The 10 best iPhone apps with iOS 8 Notification Center widgets
Greatfire says that this is only the latest attack backed by the Chinese authorities — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Github have each been targeted in the past. The reports claim that government is attempting to redirect traffic to a dummy page set up to resemble iCloud.com.
“If users ignored the security warning and clicked through to the Apple site and entered their username and password, this information has now been compromised by the Chinese authorities,” Greatfire said.
Shortly after the report began to spread, Apple issued an official response on its support page noting that the iCloud servers have not been accessed. The post should also help those worried about their privacy check to ensure they are secure:
Apple is deeply committed to protecting our customers’ privacy and security. We’re aware of intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information, and we take this very seriously. These attacks don’t compromise iCloud servers, and they don’t impact iCloud sign in on iOS devices or Macs running OS X Yosemite using the Safari browser.
