A couple of days ago, Apple released a statement on the matter, claiming that iCloud and its subsequent services had not been breached. Cook reiterated those claims today, and added that the Cupertino company plans to rollout a number of new security features to make its devices more safe.
It is said that celebrities’ iCloud accounts were compromised by a mix of social engineering and phishing scams. Cook tells the Journal that Apple’s new plan to combat this is to begin sending push notifications to users when someone tries to change or reset their account passwords.
That’s not all, Apple will soon begin notifying users whenever someone tries to restore iCloud data to a new device, or a device logs into an account for the first time. Until now, users merely received an email when someone tried to change a password or log in from an unknown Apple device.
Cook says Apple also plans to broaden its use of “two-factor authentication,†which requires a user to have two of three things to access an account: a password, a separate four-digit one-time code, or a long access key given to users. Most iOS device owners don’t have this feature enabled.