Tim Cook Met With a Chinese Official After the Government Allegedly Stole iCloud Passwords

Tim Cook flew to China to meet with officials after the government was accused of stealing iCloud logins.

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The Internet in China is vastly different than the version Americans are accustomed to. There is a huge system of filters known as the Great Firewall that controls the spread of information to manipulate what citizens can get access to. 

iCloud.com users in China were reminded of this tight grip when a "man-in-the-middle" attack tried to intercept their login names and passwords following the release of the iPhone 6 in the country this week. While it isn't clear if the government was behind the attack, the non-profit Great Fire—which monitors censorship in China—claimed that it was (the government was recently accused of this same attack against Google accounts). China has denied involvement. If they were able to gain iCloud credentials, this would have gave them access to photographs, texts, and other information protected by Apple in the cloud.

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China today and met with Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai to speak about user protection while in central Beijing. While timing could be coincidence, it seems likely that Cook is there in response to the hacking allegations.

Apple hasn't officially responded to the accusations against the Chinese government, but they did release an iCloud update and reminder to users not to proceed with logging in if they see a warning in their browser. 

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