iCloud may have been hacked by ancient trick

According to reports A simple brute force attack seems the likely culprit at this point in the investigation. That'is simply inexcusable. The basics of a brute force attack are repeated password guessing until the attacking program and computer hit upon the correct password. It's really only a matter of time if no lock-outs are issued after say..three tries. That's a pretty standard number of attempts before an account lock-out is issued. The iCloud HAD no such measure in place.

I remember discussing this kind of simple attack 15 years ago with a then 13 year old programmer from across the country. 15 YEARS AGO! He wanted me to write a password generator for him to break into a single not for profit website of no real substance. Of course I did not even give him a hint as to where to start, but he ultimately hacked the forums of the site. The lad was so proud. Kids..Sheesh!

BTW, I have no idea who Dam Kaminsky--chief scientist for Whiteops.com--is, but whatever he is smoking, I would give it a trial.

The iCloud hole was an airplane hangar door. The simplest answer is most often the correct one. No desktop compromise was needed. None is indicated. Ockham's Razor applied to computer forensics. Hackers being hacked? Nahhhh!

If it turns out that this Kaminsky bloke is correct, I will eat my hat, your hat, and anyone else that wants a hat consumed.

In humorous and related news Apple stock was actually up a bit last I checked. Oh what delicious irony.