Apple Chief Talks with Chinese Official after Alleged Nation State iCloud Hack

China has been accused of stealing Chinese netizens’ iCloud passwords, by intercepting communications between Internet users and the Apple Web storage service.

Days after the revelation, Apple CEO Time Cook paid a seemingly unplanned visit to a Chinese official. It is believed the “man-in-the-middle attack” was perpetrated by the Chinese government with the ultimate aim of monitoring data that is now locked by the iPhone's new privacy protections.

Details of the meeting are murky, but Cook met with Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai on Oct. 22 to exchange "views on protection of users' information, and "views on strengthening cooperation in information and communication fields," according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

“It's unclear whether Cook's trip was prompted by the iCloud incident or scheduled ahead of time; Apple did not respond to Mashable's repeated requests for comment, and we could not find any prior reports on his plans to visit,” the news website reports.

On Oct. 21, Apple addressed the apparent tampering, posting a support page on which the company referred to "intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information," without pointing to China.

One clue that a MITM is underway is usually a screen stating something like, “This Connection is Untrusted.” That means the user’s Web browser has detected the site’s digital security certificate is bogus.

Chinese censorship monitoring group GreatFire first reported the MITM attack on Oct. 20.