Giuliani visited an Apple Store to unlock his iPhone after being named Trump's cybersecurity adviser
A few weeks after being named President Trump’s cybersecurity adviser, Rudy Giuliani visited an Apple Store in San Francisco for help unlocking his iPhone.
Giuliani had forgotten the passcode. He entered the wrong one at least 10 times, prompting the phone to lock up, NBC News reported, citing two people familiar with the matter and a photo of an internal Apple store memo.
"Very sloppy," a former Apple store employee who was there in February 2017 when Giuliani stopped by told NBC News. "Trump had just named him as an informal adviser on cybersecurity and here, he couldn’t even master the fundamentals of securing your own device."
Giuliani took to Twitter to defend his 2017 mishap, saying that "we're all human."
"Last I checked the FBI, last year, had to ask Apple to unlock an iPhone too!" Giuliani tweeted on Halloween night. "We’re all human, just maybe not tonight ..."
Hey @NBCNews, last I checked the FBI, last year, had to ask Apple to unlock an iPhone too!
We’re all human, just maybe not tonight...🎃— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) October 31, 2019
Giuliani was named Trump’s cybersecurity adviser on Jan. 12, 2017. He was chosen, in part, for his then "sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector," the presidential transition office said in a statement at the time.
Since then, the 75-year-old has been no stranger to digital mishaps. Just last week, NBC News reported that Giuliani twice butt-dialed one of its reporters, leaving long voicemail messages.
In November 2018, he mistakenly tweeted a hyperlink while criticizing the Mueller probe. The accidental link quickly became a real link to a page that says, "Donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country."
Mueller filed an indictment just as the President left for https://t.co/8ZNrQ6X29a July he indicted the Russians who will never come here just before he left for Helsinki.Either could have been done earlier or later. Out of control!Supervision please?
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) November 30, 2018
Giuliani blamed Twitter for allowing "someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message." A Twitter spokesman responded at the time, saying “the accusation that we’re artificially injecting something into a tweet is completely false.”
Cybersecurity experts told NBC News that these mishaps are cause for concern and indicate a lax approach to mobile phone security. The experts said visiting the Apple Store to unlock his phone makes him "very vulnerable" and went as far as to call his visit "crazy."
