14 DAY TRIAL // Apple denies hackers have gained access to hundreds of millions of customer accounts and that they have the ability to remotely wipe devices of their data.
Earlier this week, reports started coming in from a hacker group called "Turkish Crime Family," who said they had already notified Apple of their feat, but received no proper reply. Reporters from Motherboard were even given access to one of the emails the hackers used to communicate with Apple. The group demanded $75,000 worth of Bitcoins or Ethereum, or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards, giving Apple a deadline of April 7 to comply.
"There have not been any breaches in any of Apple's systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services," Apple told users.
The tech giant added that it was actively monitoring its systems to prevent unauthorized access to user accounts. They also said they were working with law enforcement to identify the criminals involved.
Precaution can't harm
To be on the safe side, users could go on and change their passwords, pick stronger combinations and, of course, they should not recycle passwords over different sites. Enabling two-step authentication is also something that everyone should do for every service that provides this option, not just Apple's.
The fact that these hackers were not consistent when saying how many accounts they have control over, going from 300 million to close to 600 million in different messages was highly suspicious. Additionally, if hackers really had this much control over Apple's services, could remotely wipe devices and reset iCloud accounts and so on, for this many users you'd think they'd ask for a more consistent ransom.
Instead, they chose to demand $75,000 which is pretty much pocket change for a company the size of Apple, perhaps believing that Apple may just dump the money into their accounts without thinking twice or investigating the matter properly.