He claimed to have gained access to a large amount of iCloud accounts and other Apple services and threatened to reset 319 million account of the Cupertino company if they did not consent to satisfy his pecuniary claims.
However the adventure of the hacker Kerem Albayrak, did not end well, at least for him. In these days he was sentenced to two years in prison with suspension of sentence. Alongside with 300 hours of socially useful work and six months of electronic curfews.
But let’s take a step back: the story began in March 2017, when the then 22-year-old Albayrak, residing in London, had sent an email to Apple Security saying he had obtained access to millions of Apple accounts and that, if the company hadn’t paid him $ 75,000 in cryptocurrencies (or, alternatively, a thousand $ 100 iTunes gift cards), he would reset 319 million account, then spreading the databases online.
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The strange story of the Turkish Crime Family Apple ‘hacker’
A week later, Albayrak had uploaded a video to YouTube. In which he accesses two apparently random iCloud accounts. After sending it to Apple Security and some newspapers, the hacker had raised the stakes. Asking for $100,000 and threatening to reset all the accounts he had access to.
Apple had turned to British and U.S. law enforcement agencies, and on March 28, 2017, National Crime Agency agents had arrested Albayrak at his London home. From the seizure of his electronic devices. It emerged that the young man was part of a group of hackers who called himself “Turkish Crime Family”. To whom he had ensured the success of the operation. And, if something had gone wrong, at least a good deal of “media attention”.
And in fact it seems that the hacker was aiming for nothing more than fame, since investigations showed that the Apple system had not been compromised in any way. Albayrak data referred to came from previously compromised third-party services, and most were already inactive. After pleading guilty to account violation and blackmail. He got the mentioned penalty.
