Hackers Threaten to Wipe 300 Million iOS Devices Unless Apple Pays Ransom

A group of hackers, who’ve identified themselves as the “Turkish Crime Family,” have threatened to remotely wipe hundreds of millions of iCloud-connected iPhones and iPads belonging to owners whose accounts have “been compromised,” according to a report published this morning to Motherboard.

The malicious group has allegedly given Apple until April 7th, 2017 to comply with their demands, which they’ve stipulated as a ransom to the tune of $75,000 in either Ethereum or Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, or $100,000 in iTunes gift-cards.

“I just want my money and thought this would be an interesting report that a lot of Apple customers would be interested in reading and hearing,” one of the hackers allegedly explained to Motherboard.

It’s not clear if the group’s claims of having achieved access to these “compromised” iCloud accounts are valid, however, in a series of screenshots — and also, a YouTube video — the hackers appear to have provided evidence of internal conversations that have taken place between them and Apple’s Cupertino-based security team.

The hacking group has allegedly shared these screenshots exclusively with Motherboard, who was first to break the story this morning. However, a series of posts to the group’s official Twitter account paint a mixed message of what they actually have access to — and what they’re capable of doing, for that matter. For instance, they allege that as many as 200 million, 300 million, and even as many as 599 million iCloud accounts could be compromised, respectively, in a series of unhinged Tweets written in Turkish. The group also claims to have access to a plethora of Apple-generated email accounts, including those utilizing the @me and @icloud domains.

“We firstly kindly request you to remove the video that you have uploaded on your YouTube channel as it’s seeking unwanted attention, second of all we would like you to know that we do not reward cyber criminals for breaking the law,” one of Apple’s security team members said in response to the group, while adding that all archived communications between them will be sent to the appropriate authorities.

Apple has not responded to multiple requests for comment on the situation; however, it should be noted that hacking groups are notorious for extorting large companies like Apple, in hopes of gaining monetary ransom in exchange for putting an end to their shenanigans. A classic example of this would be the now infamous ‘Celebgate’ scandal of 2015, in which a number of high-profile celebrities fell victim to their iCloud accounts being hacked — and their most valuable data being shared like a video of cute puppies gone viral, as a result.

Nevertheless, it’s difficult even for Apple to verify the validity of this situation, at this point. Therefore, we highly recommend that users take the appropriate measures to secure their iCloud accounts as soon as possible — just to be safe.

If you haven’t done so in a while, we recommend changing your iCloud password, which can be done on your iOS device by navigating to:

1. Settings
2. iCloud
3. Tap on your name
4. Select Password & Security
5. Then tap Change Password

Alternatively, if you haven’t done so already, it would be wise to enable Two-Factor Authentication on your iCloud account, which will provide an extra layer of security by remotely linking your iCloud-connected devices and requiring you to validate one of them from another when signing into iCloud to make changes to your account.

Have you updated your iCloud password recently? Let us know in the comments!

Want a FREE iPhone 7? Click here to enter our monthly contest for a chance!
Follow us on Apple News by pressing the (+) button at the top of our channel

from http://ift.tt/2nnEV64
via IFTTT