Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 23-03-2017
A group of hackers have threatened to wipe data from millions of Apple devices in two weeks if the company doesn’t pay them $150,000.
The group, which calls itself Turkish Crime Family, claims to have login credentials for more than 627 million icloud.com, me.com and mac.com email addresses.
Even though the Turkish Crime Family hasn’t been in the media spotlight before, its members claim that they’ve been involved in selling stolen online databases in private circles for the past few years.
Initially the group asked Apple for the equivalent of $75,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum cryptocurrency.
The ransom value has been raised to $150,000 and the group intends to increase it further if Apple doesn’t pay in three days.
According to the hackers, over 220 million of these credentials have been verified to work and provide access to iCloud accounts that don’t have security measures like two-factor authentication turned on.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the absence of payment, the group plans to launch an automated attack on April 7 that would log into iCloud accounts and wipe their contents and the devices associated with them.
If Apple does confirm the group’s claims, it could force password resets for its entire iCloud user base just to be on the safe side.
Until then, concerned users can change their passwords on their own and turn on the iCloud two-factor authentication feature.
– Macworld
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