A new battle is being raged by an unknown Hacker Group and one of the largest technology conglomerates in the world. Over 500 million Apple accounts are supposedly at stake here, as the hackers demand Apple hand over 75,000 dollars in cryptocurrency or 100,000 dollars’ worth of iTunes gift cards. Apple responded to this threat yesterday and reassured their customers that their accounts and details are still safe.
Hacking giants
There have been countless examples of large corporations such as Sony and VISA getting hacked by unknown groups in the recent past.
Clearly digital data is not safe, not even for organizations like the NSA and CIA. In this age of digital uncertainty, it is not implausible that a new group called “Turkish Crime Family” actually has access to a large share of Apple account holder details.
Apple released a statement yesterday in response to the treat, claiming that their systems have not been breached by any group and that its impossible for millions of accounts to be wiped out remotely by a group of hackers. An Apple spokesperson had this to say regarding the controversy: “There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services."
The “Turkish Crime Family” however seem resolute in their stance, and have laid out their demands quite clearly.
They expect the company to pay them 75,000 dollars in cryptocurrency or 100,000 dollars in iTunes gift cards by April 7, or they will wipe out the details of all 559 million accounts supposedly in their possession.
Fate of Apple
Both sides seem confident that the other party has nothing on them. While the hacking group has nothing to lose in this fight, the fate of Apple corporation lies firmly in the resolution of this problem.
If the 500 million accounts do get deleted post-April 7th, the company will have tons to answer for, and could well be run out of the market due to a massive loss in goodwill.
Companies around the world need to take heed of this problem being faced by Apple and work towards strengthening their cyber security or this problem could easily be replicated around the world, and corporations could be held hostage on a more regular basis.
