Hackers Claim Access To 300 Million iCloud Accounts, Demand $75,000 From Apple To Delete the Cache of Data (vice.com)

A hacker or group of hackers calling themselves the "Turkish Crime Family" claim they have access to at least 300 million iCloud accounts, and will delete the alleged cache of data if Apple pays a ransom by early next month. Motherboard is reporting that the hackers are demanding "$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." From the report: 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. "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. (According to the email headers, the return-path of the email is to an address with the @apple.com domain). The hackers also uploaded a YouTube video of them allegedly logging into some of the stolen accounts. The hacker appears to access an elderly woman's iCloud account, which includes backed-up photos, and the ability to remotely wipe the device. 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. 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. The hackers did not provide Motherboard with any of the supposedly stolen iCloud accounts to verify this claim, except those shown in the video.

Comments

Publicising Blackmail?

[rtb61]

Why would anyone publicise blackmail. Seriously, think about it, makes no sense at all. It publicly forces Apple into a corner where they are aiding and abetting crime by paying the ransom, so no ransom can be paid. So a mass invasion of privacy, why, no ransom? So who benefits by a publicised mass invasion or privacy, someone who already hugely and grossly invades privacy on a mass scale and wants to attack Apple to prove it can not provide privacy. Only one culprit really fits that bill and corporate espionage on all sorts of scale was inevitable and is happening. So which corporation most hates Apples ability to sell 'you' privacy, whilst that disgusting filthy vile company is selling 'your' privacy, M$. This really does stink of a corporate funded attack, maybe not from the top but most certainly from a major investor.

For Apple to prove itself it must act with an extreme corporate legal vengeance, can Apple buy privacy, in this case it most certainly, by offering ten times the blackmail demand with reward for the culprits and those who paid them. Most likely source of the hackers, corrupt intelligence services, contracts or ex-agents (Turkey recently conducted a purge).

Re:Publicising Blackmail?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Alternatively, this is a bunch of script kiddies who managed to guess the password to a handful of accounts, and are now trying to make a name for themselves.

Re:When people are dumb enough to rely on the clou

[Anonymous Coward]

I call total BULLSHIT on this story:

1) when you delete a picture there is a pop up warning you that the picture will be delete from ALL devices.

2) deleted pictures are not deleted, they are moved to the trash album, in which they reside for 30 days, then and only then they are truly deleted. You just go to the trash album, select the pics and tap the recover button.

Re:heart cloud

[n329619]

Love the cloud

There is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer.

Some prudent tips I have shared with friends

[technicalnotebook]

While time will tell the extent of this, I have been recommending the following to my friends (copied verbatim from https://www.facebook.com/stuar... ).

As a precaution, here are some prudent tips:
1. Log into your Apple Account at https://appleid.apple.com/ and enable two-factor authentication if you haven't already (see https://support.apple.com/en-a...) .
2. While you are there, if you have not changed your password in a while, consider doing that too (https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201355).
3. As the threats include the threat of remotely wiping devices, you can disable this on each of your iCloud connected devices. See Macworld's good article on how to do this for each device type: http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-... . Note that if you do this, you will also be unable to use the Find my iPhone/iPad/Mac feature. Until more details come out, personally I feel this is acceptable given the risk.
4. When you are logged in at https://appleid.apple.com/acco..., check to ensure there are no devices you do not recognise under 'Devices'.
5. For the next few weeks, periodically do a local backup using iTunes of your iDevices. See https://support.apple.com/en-a... and click on 'Use iTunes'. I recommend you also set a backup password, this encrypts the backup and stores additional information making a future restore easier.
6. As always, BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP. For your Mac, I would already hope you have backups in place. If not, my favourite is CrashPlan http://crashplan.com/ and I have used it for years/put many friends onto it also.
Time will tell what will happen with these accounts, it never hurts to take a few prudent steps until the community at large knows more.