“A hacker or group of hackers is apparently trying to extort Apple over alleged access to a large cache of iCloud and other Apple email accounts,” Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard. “The hackers, who identified themselves as ‘Turkish Crime Family’, demanded $75,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum, another increasingly popular crypto-currency, or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards in exchange for deleting the alleged cache of data.”
“The hackers provided screenshots of alleged emails between the group and members of Apple’s security team. One also gave Motherboard access to an email account allegedly used to communicate with Apple,” Cox reports. “‘Are you willing to share a sample of the data set?’ an unnamed member of Apple’s security team wrote to the hackers a week ago, according to one of the emails stored in the account.”
“Now, the hackers are threatening to reset a number of the iCloud accounts and remotely wipe victim’s Apple devices on April 7, unless Apple pays the requested amount,” Cox reports. “According to one of the emails in the accessed account, the hackers claim to have access to over 300 million Apple email accounts, including those use @icloud and @me domains. However, the hackers appear to be inconsistent in their story; one of the hackers then claimed they had 559 million accounts in all.”
Read more in the full article here.
“‘I just want my money and thought this would be an interesting report that a lot of Apple customers would be interested in reading and hearing,’ one of the hackers told [Motherboard],” Hyacinth Mascarenhas reports for International Business Times. “To prove their claims, members of the hacking group reportedly provided Motherboard with screenshots of alleged emails between the group and Apple’s security team and access to an email account reportedly used to communicate with the Cupertino company.”
“The group is also said to have given the site a video, uploaded to YouTube, allegedly showing them browsing through a number of stolen iCloud accounts,” Mascarenhas reports. “According to the emails allegedly exchanged between Turkish Crime Family and Apple, a member of the company’s security team asked them to take down the YouTube video ‘as it’s seeking unwanted attention’ and said they ‘do not reward cyber criminals for breaking the law.’ The team member also warned that archived communications with the group would be sent to the authorities.”
“Members of the group were also reportedly inconsistent about their claim with one of the hackers claiming they had 559 million accounts,” Mascarenhas reports. “The Turkish Crime Family Twitter account, however, claims 200 million iCloud accounts will be affected in the April cyberattack.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If true, somebody should tell these jokers that crime doesn’t pay*.
*Unless you’re Google or Samsung.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Tom R.” for the heads up.]