20 October

When you sign in to a website and see a certificate warning, the certificate the site presented to prove its identity did not pass your browser's check, and someone in the middle of the connection may be impersonating the site. On 20 October 2014, GreatFire, which monitors censorship in China, said the Chinese authorities were impersonating the iCloud website with a fake certificate that no certificate authority had vouched for (a self-signed one) and intercepting traffic, which is known as a man-in-the-middle attack. According to MacTrast, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry said Beijing was resolutely opposed to hacking. The next day, Apple posted a support page that did not mention China but told users never to enter their Apple Account details (then called an Apple ID) or password on a site that shows a certificate warning. Wherever you are in Asia, do not enter a password on any site that shows a certificate warning, and check under Settings > Sign-In & Security on your iPhone that two-factor authentication is on for your Apple Account, so that a leaked password alone is not enough to get in (as of October 2026, Apple requires it for all new accounts).