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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

What difference does it make how strong the password is? It was a seven-digit alphanumeric password, right? Is iCloud going to permit up to 36^7-1 failed login attempts in a row without rate-limiting, banning, or launching missiles at the owner of the offending IP address?

Assuming the answer is no, there are only two remaining alternatives: 1) Someone targeted and keylogged him to obtain the password, in which case it doesn't matter how strong the password is; or 2) Someone hacked iCloud itself and stole their (presumably unsalted) password file.

In that case, yeah, a stronger password might've helped. Bad user. No cookie.

But if he thinks he's having a rough night, consider what scenario #2 would mean to Apple. The impact of an iCloud hack would be measured in multiple billions of dollars of market capitalization.

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It's a good point actually - does iCloud in any way prevent multiple account logins?

There's another possibility: he re-used his iCloud password on another account, that was compromised, and someone tried that successfully against his iCloud account.

The bigger issue, as someone else has said, is putting so much remote control behind a single point of security.

The strength of the password is relevant in the scenario where the password was actually brute-forced through an interface. If it was jesus01 (or something else common - typically religious), then it may be an easy hack for the hacker.

"Brute-forced" was a bad word choice.

Typing-the-most-common-passwords-with-numbers through the interface style. Basically guessing from the top password list.

But again, why would iCloud allow that many consecutive failed login attempts without locking the account?

iCloud would surely block consecutive, failed login attempts. From the post, reading years and years, opens up the possibility that it may have been something the hacker was following for some time. Therefore, he would have been blocked, but may have come back in 1 week to try again.

The possibility is a bit far-fetched, but it exists. The likelihood that this was actually the case is extremely low.

I _strongly_ suspect the iCloud web login will block brute force attempts. What I do wonder though, is if there's some other place an iCloud/AppleID login can be brute forced without appropriate rate limiting? Maybe an IAP API endpoint? Or an in app advertising endpoint? I wonder if the "check whether an IAP succeeded" API that the "just redirect you dns to my server and add my root cert" "exploit" uses is failing to block brute force attempts?

Even if iCloud allowed 10 failed logins before locking out for an hour, every hour, every day for seven years, that would still only let you crack a 4 digit lowercase-alphanumeric password. I'd be willing to bet that either the attacker took the password from something or that 'alphanumeric' is a misleadingly good description for the password.

Brute-forced through what interface?

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