Two Chinese companies are warning customers that hackers used stolen Apple IDs to get into their digital payment accounts and steal money.
{mosads}Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent, according to Bloomberg, both said that they had contacted Apple over the Apple IDs, which some users have linked to their Alipay and Tencent WePay accounts.
The companies did not offer details on how the hackers might have gotten the accounts but recommended that users of their digital wallets take steps to protect themselves including by changing passwords.
Alipay also said that Apple has not taken steps to fix the issue yet.
“Since Apple hasn’t resolved this issue, users who’ve linked their Apple ID to any payments method, including Alipay, WePay or credit cards, may be vulnerable to theft,” Alipay said in a post, according to Bloomberg’s translation.
When asked for comment, Apple said that it encourages its “customers to create a strong password and turn on two factor authentication to protect their accounts. “
Digital wallets are popular in China. Ant Financial is estimated to handle more than half of China’s $17 trillion worth of digital transactions and has over 800 million customers. Tencent has tried to use integration with its immensely popular WeChat messaging service to compete with Ant Financial in the digital payment space.
Apple is dealing with separate cybersecurity issues in China following a Bloomberg Businessweek report about it being compromised by one of its suppliers, Super Micro, and suffering a hardware hack at the hands of the Chinese government.
Apple and Super Micro have vigorously refuted the report, denying that their systems have been compromised. The two may brief Congressional investigators on the matter as early as this week.