The Hacker Who Tried To Blackmail Condemned Apple

A 22-year-old man from North London, a man was sentenced last week by British justice to a two-year suspended prison sentence and 300 hours of unpaid work. For a period of six months, he must respect an electronic curfew. He had tried to blackmail Apple by threatening to reset accounts.

According to the British National Crime Agency (NCA), Kerem Albayrak had demanded from Apple the payment of the equivalent of $ 75,000 in cryptocurrencies or a thousand iTunes gift cards of $ 100, in Exchange of the erasure of a database in its possession which would have contained 319 million iCloud accounts and other accounts of Apple.

The man who is presented as a cybercriminal has boasted and promoted himself a lot as his attempt at extortion has gained momentum. He notably filmed himself accessing two iCloud accounts (supposedly taken at random) and published the video on YouTube, while sending the link to Apple and alerting several media.

This case dating back to 2017 echoes the Turkish Crime Family group of which Kerem Albayrak was a spokesperson. As Apple had announced, the investigation showed that there had been no compromise of its computer network. The man had only had access to iCloud accounts due to the reuse of passwords by users. These passwords came from compromises of third-party services (not Apple services) and mostly inactive.

Obviously, Kerem Albayrak was negligent in hiding his tracks online. He told investigators, "When you have power on the internet, it's like glory and everyone respects you. Everyone is chasing it right now."

The Hacker Who Tried To Blackmail Condemned Apple