While many Australian and US iPhone owners were hacked since the beginning of this week, Vietnamese iPhone owners did not seem to be in threat, experts reported.

Vice Director of online security Ngo Tuan Anh at Viet Nam's leading security firm BKAV stated that in Australia and the United States, hackers had obtained access to a leaked list of personal data and passwords from some online services such as eBay and PayPal, exploiting the fact that many people will reuse the same account details for their Apple ID.

"However, not many Vietnamese iPhone owners use those online services, so hackers could not access their iCloud accounts," Tuan Anh noted.

"In those countries, database breaches are becoming far too common, with eBay, Adobe, Yahoo and Target falling victim," stated Nguyen Quang Anh, mobile phone expert at Onecall mobilephone centre in Ha Noi.

Earlier this week, many Australian owners of Apple devices began discovering that their iPhones, iPads and Macs had been hacked by someone using the name Oleg Pliss. They were directed to a PayPal account and were asked to send money to have them unlocked, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

So far, the majority of the victims appear to be from Australia, according to an Apple support thread, but there were also owners affected in New Zealand, the United States and Canada. One Australian user commented that they were in London when the threatening message appeared.

The hacker is reportedly targeting Apple products that do not have passcodes–allowing them to use the "Find My iPhone" function to remotely lock the devices.

Just like their Australian counterparts, American victims are being advised to bring in their locked device to an Apple store to be reset. However, this will cause the user to lose everything stored in the device, an employee from a California Apple store informed CBS Los Angeles.

The cyber attack happened just as Apple is preparing for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference next week. The company reportedly has plans to unveil a new "smart home" control system at the conference.

VNS/VNN