It is a mechanism of shifting responsibility. If your password is "1234" and you gave it away to a totally legit MS support center employee that called you recently because MS has detected that your iPhone has a virus, then it is on you. But if North Korean hackers compromised your watch via elaborate hacking campaign to mine bitcoin on it, then it is "not your fault".

It sounds like a legitimate usage of the word “hacked” to me. Maybe not the most critical vulnerability because they did not gain full access, but they managed to gain some level of control of the owner’s watch without their permission, and it sounds like the reason was not that they left it lying around unlocked (to be clear it sounds like they got control because the watch was unlocked in the owner’s wrist, but they were accessing it wirelessly- sounds like an issue with Apple’s security model that can be fixed).

When I logged onto Skype, I had a new name, and a new contact, both of which were Ivan something. I immediately started chatting with Ivan, who told me that there was a weakness in the Skype login security, which he tried to exploit.

I changed my password to another Medium to Strong password, and a few minutes later my name was again changed to “Anders xoxo Hafreager”, and a message that he had hacked me again.

I still don’t know what he did or how he did it.

That said, phishing is a form of hacking the individual so even by a strict definition it still works.

Having so many accounts where some stuff might (or might not) be important, folks get very sensitive to being "hacked". Or in other words, having a stranger break in and rummage through their underwear.

Different times.

I sort of hate how this thread immediately rallied around “must be crazy people hallucinating” and I hope Apple takes the reports a bit more seriously & investigates.

Edit: I do agree that passwords guessed or phished doesn’t count in my mind as hacking.

In my case I was waking up to my watch using itself. It changed contacts, added locations in maps, placed and cancelled two calls to emergency services and more. I then made the mistake of taking it off my wrist. Now the screen is locked and the watch will continue to enter wrong PINs, locking itself for more time every time. You can’t shut it down - the watch will start to type and dismiss the shutdown dialog (or call 911 again!).

I haven’t gotten around to taking it to an Apple Store and have returned to my Garmin watch.

Because it’s probably kids messing around.

I stared pressing the button to return home and they popped up the keyboard and typed “We are in control”.

That would be a very unusual ghost touch issue, if true.

thats why this sound like some kind of hardware malfunction (or some substance on touch screen - I personally experienced ghost touches on my phone from dirty screen) or it's some kind of prank by kids using some flipper and previously authorized device or something similar

Or, more likely, it's some kind of shitty prank by someone nearby to the users.

This is a strange argument. Of course there can be sensitive data there. Photos, (i)Messages, eMail, calendar events, addressbook, health data, voice recordings, location data. The device is password-protected for a reason.

It is also usually connected to a paired iPhone and to the Internet. You might be able to do some shady stuff with the phone using private APIs.

This is called an append-only log. It can be built in many ways. Which way is suitable largely depends on the security requirements.

My personal favorite kind of append-only logging is transparency logging. If you'd like to learn more you can check out e.g. sigsum.org, an open-source project my colleagues and I have been working on for several years now.

One consequence of these ghost touches would be inputting the wrong PIN which will initially lock the device for one minute, so I don't see what's strange about that.

Which messages, specifically, are you referring to with "exact time & date" and "same timestamp"? I skimmed through them but nothing of sort stood out.

Otherwise, why on earth would i care about signing up to apple forums?

I’d only go there if i had issues (obviously)

It's something that perfectly sane people could experience and not realize it was a hallucination because it's a quite rare & unknown phenomenon(and one that you often won't mention because everyone thinks you're crazy if you say it).

1: https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/apple-watch-mirroring-...

> From: definitelyNotAppleScam.com

> Subject: Your Apple Watch is hacked

> Hello [insert name here],

> We have found that your Apple Watch Series x has been compromised by hackers.

> Please click on the link below to reset your password

> [Link that asks for previous password and something idk]

That's the intended design, but perhaps the trusted device layer could be bypassed under some circumstance? It seems extremely unlikely, but maybe not impossible.

edit: The more I read and think about this, the less I think it's likely. I'll keep this as a devil's advocate sort of message, but I feel like I should still point out that the entire premise here seems a little nuts and the people reporting the hacks are more likely to be uninformed/paranoid/etc and dealing with ghost touches than the watches were likely to be compromised.

If this is for real I expect we'll hear more about it soon enough.

Nevertheless, this does seem like an anti-Apple campaign.