My iPhone has been hacked, what to do? (2024)

Mac Jim ID

20,225 points

Restart your phone. As long as you have not jailbroken your phone, it cannot be hacked. There is no iPhone message from Apple that will come up saying all of your operations are being tracked and it would make no sense for a hacker to announce that they are tracking you unless they want money or personal account information from you. If the QR code opened up a website, you can just navigate to a different site.

As long as you did not give them your Apple ID/Password, there is nothing else you need to do.

Mac Jim ID

20,225 points

Bob Timmons

166,190 points

Your phone is not hacked. This is a scam that is trying to trick you into providing personal information.

Do NOT click or tap on a link in any message like this.

Delete the message and move on.

jonasilver137

30 points

kayley277

8 points

Kurt Lang

61,006 points

Incredible. There are four sane responses from very experienced and long standing forum members in this topic, and you latch on to the conspiracy theory gobbledygook response.

Apache is on your phone because it's supposed to be there. It's part of every OS Apple writes - iOS, iPadOS, macOS. The MIT license is also normal.

What isn't normal is you shouldn't even be able to see these items. You must have jailbroken your phone to do that and have now left it wide open to all kinds of malware.

Soul_embargo

9 points

As for your problem, bring it to Apple and have them reinstall the software. Ask them if there is a way to ensure the boot sector is not corrupt with the vulnerability, and ask them to master reset and physically plug it into their network to do the software reinstall; often times an OTA is MITMd enroute (intwecwpt) (<<< them again) with code injected software.

my opinions are based on my expwroence (<<<them again) experience.

[Edited by Moderator]

Kurt Lang

61,006 points

Just to investigate that post.

Ask them if there is a way to ensure the boot sector is not corrupt…

There's no such thing as a boot sector on an iPad. Here's the startup sequence. This is all cryptographically secured. A third party app cannot alter this data.

and ask them to master reset

There is no master reset Apple needs to do, or is some sort of special action. You can do it yourself at any time. Go to:

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Reset.

MITMd

Man In the Middle attacks are possible, but extremely rare. A jailbroken iPhone or iPad is a great way to go in that direction as you can then install apps from anywhere, not just the App Store.

Losingithackornot

12 points

patpofFallbrook

12 points

Hackednsikofit

12 points

Kurt Lang

61,006 points

Hate to tell you this, but you are being paranoid.

A message is just a message. It can say anything. If I knew your email address or phone number, I could send you a message that I know for a fact you're going to be fired from your job in three days.

Does simply saying something I made up on the spot make it true? The answer is, of course not! The messages saying your phone as been hacked are no different. It's a lie. PERIOD!!!! Stop believing them.

Servant of Cats

14,410 points

"Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave your iPhone 40 hacks

When she saw what she had done

She gave your Android 41"

If your iPhone has been hacked in this way, there is not much you can do, other than to sweep up the pieces and to call the police. If you mean that you saw a message claiming that your iPhone was hacked - in the computing sense of the word – that was likely a scam, presented by criminals.

FTC – How To Spot, Avoid, and Report Tech Support Scams

Recognize and avoid social engineering schemes including phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

If you are worried about apps tracking you – and, let's face it, a lot of developers of social media apps and store loyalty apps want to track you, mine data about you, or spam you with ads in some way or another – then delete apps you don't trust. Or take advantage of iOS's ability to restrict their access to things like your microphone, your camera, and your location.

About privacy and Location Services in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS - Apple Support

tapper2024

8 points

I'm curious about how/why this works?

Context: It seems to have cleared up a worrisome issue for us. I have a child studying overseas who used their banking app on public wifi (they knows not to do this but felt stuck, as esim data service wasn't working). When they go into banking app to initiate any kind of transaction, super sketchy pop up appears asking for debit PIN. Restarting seems to have cleared this up. But do I trust that this is fixed? We're doing sw updates, app updates, clearing cache etc, still.

Servant of Cats

14,410 points

Kurt Lang wrote:

Apache is on your phone because it's supposed to be there. It's part of every OS Apple writes - iOS, iPadOS, macOS. The MIT license is also normal.

What isn't normal is you shouldn't even be able to see these items. You must have jailbroken your phone to do that and have now left it wide open to all kinds of malware.

There may be some legal requirement for Apple to display the licenses if they want the benefit of using the code. In which case they might have buried the text deep within some menu item that displays other legalese. Whether third parties charge for the use of their code, or not, they're often "funny" about wanting their copyright notice or license to be displayed!

Sure enough, on my iPhone, running iOS 16.7.1, Settings > General > Legal & Regulatory > Legal Notices shows a very long list of third-party copyright notices, and a few third-party licenses, including the MIT license.

I can assure you that my iPhone is not jailbroken or hacked.

The presence of that MIT license proves only that Apple wanted to use some piece of code that falls under it, not that there is anything sinister going on, or that an iPhone is "hacked."