Can iPads be hacked?

[Curtis]

We are having an issue with some new iPads. My kids were given iPads for Christmas and two of them seem to be hacked. Strange websites show up when Safari is opened and also in history. Most of them are some type of porn site. We are running a wifi system for the house, but we are using security proticals.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

[oath-keeper]

Tell the kids to stay off the porn....

[glockman19]

The iPads were not new. Someone used them. Just delete cookies and browser history and you should be fine.
Yes any programmer familiar with a system can compromise that system.

[Curtis]

The iPads were new in the unopened box. I did clear the cookies and the history.

[DaveInOroValley]

You could always "reset" them to default settings to see if that clears up anything that shouldn't be there, but I would be suspicious of another person that may have had access to it or even possibly an innocent browsing session that may had ended in an undesirable location.

[the86d]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oMYYP1LnMA

[elx144]

They can be hacked, but it sounds like someone visited a website that reset the default page at Safari's startup. Set it back to Google.com or whatever it was and you should be good to go.

[bandook]

Your kids (or their friends) are using the iPad to visit porn sites.

The hack probability is pretty low in this instance. Maybe this is a good time to have the talk with them.
If you don't handle this properly, they'll simply switch to 'private' view which means that a cursory view of the iPad will not show any porn sites in the history

[the86d]

Give a kid a tablet, make sure they don't take it in the bathroom "too much".

[mikenewgun87]

Put it in a bag of rice...

[ldsnet]

Yes they are hack-able, but are very difficult to do so. If you don't jailbreak the pad or install apps from questionable sources, you should be fine. As others have said delete all history and reset everything and you should be clean.

It will take for ever but you can reload the operating system (with the cable) from the repository through iTunes and that will remove EVERYTHING.

[Germz]

anything can be hacked; nothing is foolproof.

[NYT]

in these situations the simplest explanation is almost always the answer. your kids, their friends, your nephew, etc are using the tablet for porn.

the simplest thing to do is to restore the ipads, encrypt them and if porn still pops up verify when the site was visited and narrow it down to who was in possession of the ipad at that moment in time.

[Arcaporale]

Your iPads are definitely not "hacked". Think about all the trouble one would have to go through to target your specific iPads, and then instead of stealing banking or identity info, they add porn to your browsing history. What would be the benefit of that?

No, a much more logical explanation is the fresh outta the box iPads have indeed visited porn sites since you giving them to the kids.

Yes they can be hacked, like anything else. But it's very unlikely.

Noble of you to assume that the kids wouldn't have done it and that the pads must have been hacked. I wish my wife shared that same mindset.

But in all seriousness I think it's time for a chat with the youngsters and for you to implement some parental controls.

[NytWolf]

Hacked? No. Infected? Yes.