Overnight, many people reported on social media that they were inexplicably logged out of their Apple ID and then had to reset their password when they tried to log back in, and no one seems to know why. Some reported having to enter their iPhone passcode to sign in to iCloud again, while others with stolen device protection enabled reported having to wait an hour before they could sign in.
Apple's System Status web page doesn't show any current issues with any of its services, so it's unclear if this is a widespread problem. That said, 9to5Mac reports that even a few of his staff members were also affected by this problem. At least A Forbes donor Apparently I also encountered the problem. The outlet saw no indication that this was related to password reset attacks perpetrated by several publications, including Forbes, covered in March.
A A Mastodon user said a member of the Apple support team told them that “sometimes random security enhancements are added to your account,” while on Reddit, someone posted today in a thread about the issue that Apple Support told them their password “was changed around midnight.”
Some people said they also had to reset their application-specific passwords for third-party apps that access their Apple ID (e.g. email clients).
However, not everyone was forced to change their password, as the person who posted in the message above said that a password reset was only “suggested”, not required.
Mac Developer Michael Tsai wrote a blog post on how to deal with the problem. In “another case where my Apple ID was mysteriously locked,” he said he had to wait an hour to reset it due to stolen device protection, Apple said. new security feature to protect iPhone owners' iCloud accounts in case their phones are stolen. Evidently, the feature only listed a grocery store that Tsai visits every two weeks as one of the non-configurable locations where the one-hour time limit for password reset would not be enforced.
Apple did not respond immediately The edgerequest for comment. In the meantime, as frustrating as the issue may seem, at least not everyone had to deal with it on hard mode: