I have been cyber bullied by an unknown assailant. They sent several emails using a throwaway GMail account and then sent several SMS texts from two different phone numbers. The last number actually sent texts to my 16 year old daughter, and I have no idea how they obtained her number.
Can my iPhone have been hacked?
Caller ID (which includes the SMS sender field) is spoofable by design. I'm fairly certain the numbers you have are innocent people's numbers chosen at random, and the offensive texts were actually sent through an online SMS service.
In any case, your mobile carrier may still have the logs containing which carrier the texts really originated. It may end up nowhere (if the far-end carrier is an online SMS gateway and the attackers used Tor, proxies or compromised computers to conceal their identity) but it's worth a try.
Get in touch with the police, they will obtain the logs from your phone's carrier and investigate based on that, and they may be able to locate the attackers, but as I said, if the attackers did their job right, the chances of them being brought to justice are unfortunately close to zero. Your best bet is to ignore them, possibly change phone numbers & e-mail addresses and making sure none of your new information leaks out (don't reveal too much on social networks, etc). Google your name and your relatives and see what comes up. Try to get any personal information taken down or change it so whatever data is published is no longer valid. I suggest you read this : After getting doxxed, how can one protect personally identifiable information?
I doubt your iPhone was compromised, especially if it's up to date. iOS exploits retail for millions on the black market and I do not think someone would waste valuable exploits just to bully someone. Your computer, on the other hand, may have been compromised. I suggest you reinstall it and change your passwords.
In most cases yes SMS messages can easily be traced if they initiated from an actual phone and not an International bulk SMS relay service (in many cases those are also still traceable).
Many countries require that all telephone metadata (which includes the source and destination numbers) is recorded and kept on file by the telephone provider either for a set time length or in some cases indefinitely. Likewise for billing purposes most telecoms keep track of every individual connection for what each one of them deems to be a reasonable time period even if it's not mandated by law in their jurisdiction.
The longevity of these records is also rapidly increasing as the price of storage declines and companies recognize the value of data mining, leveraging Big Data in numerous ways, and having large amounts of "learning data" for Artificial Intelligence applications.
Gathering the data to do what you have mentioned would not require hacking your phone but it also doesn't mean that did not happen. Most likely this information is available publicly or the bully had access to that information via some other means.
Depending on where you live law enforcement may be able to help. Likewise in most areas you can hire a Private Investigator locally who may be able to help. If you are still not sure where to go most attorneys give a free initial session and may be able to refer you to a specialist in your area.
Attorneys can also help you draft a discovery request which in some cases may help with getting research started, or at least preserved, relating to your incident.
Additionally contact the phone company and ask them to preserve the records and see if they can help. They may not be able to divulge more information without a court order however in some cases their internal fraud/abuse teams may be able to rapidly escalate getting the information to local law enforcement.
Note: As much as I wish this were not the case keep in mind that most law enforcement offices are overwhelmed by on-line crime and may consider this lower priority when compared to dealing with other issues that are either deemed more important or easier to solve. In their defense, there is a LOT of on-line crime and they have very little resources (and in some cases little training ) to deal with it. Be as helpful to them as you can be. Finally, having an attorney involved may help a lot in this regard if nothing else it may prioritize your case over others where no attorney is present.
I would also recommend pursuing the e-mail as well. In some cases this will make it much easier to identify the person doing this.
