Hackers Claim to Have Millions of iCloud Account Credentials

By Sia. in Internet. March 27, 2017.

Since the begining of Internet, notorious hackers keep showing up with different activities. Quite recently, a group of Britain-based hackers known as the Turkish Crime Family have made the headlines, as the group claims that they’ve managed to get their hands on 250 million iCloud accounts.

This incident was first brought to everyone’s attention when the hacking group sent emails to various press outlets. According to reports from various sites, the Turkish Crime Family group has since demanded Apple to pay up to USD75,000 in either the Bitcoin or Ethereum cryptocurrencies, or provide them with USD100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards by April 7th.

Should Apple pay up, the group would delete the cache of data that they claim they have. On the other hand, should Apple fail to comply, the group claims that they would reset the passwords on the iCloud accounts, as well as remotely wipe the data on the victim’s Apple devices.

200 Million iCloud accounts will be factory reset on April 7 2017

— Turkish Crime Family (@turkcrimefamily) March 21, 2017

According to Apple’s own statement, the company claims that its systems had not been breached by any hacking group lately. While the accounts currently held for ransom may not stem from Apple itself, the company did mention that the accounts and passwords acquired by the Turkish Crime Family could come from compromised third-party services.

Since the hackers first went public with their ransom attempt, ZDNet has managed to obtain a set of 54 credentials from the hacker group for verification purposes. According to their investigation, it appears that all credentials were valid. Judging from the information that was contained in the credentials, it appears that Apple’s claims that the accounts were sourced from compromised third party sources may have merit.

While we won’t know if the Turkish Crime Family would go through with their threats to Apple until April, Apple devices and services users can, and should, take preemptive measures to protect themselves from the potential fallout. Some of these measures include changing your iCloud password, or activating two-factor authentication on your Apple devices and services.