Roger Fingas
Police in the coastal Chinese province of Zhejiang have arrested 22 Apple distributors, accusing them of reselling iPhone user data to anyone willing to pay.
The people allegedly scoured an internal Apple database for information such as Apple IDs and phone numbers, according to Engadget. Prices for the illicit data ranged from 10 to 180 yuan, or around $1.50 to $26.
Collectively the distributors made about 50 million yuan — $7.36 million — before police intervened. Reports haven't revealed the number of affected accounts and devices, or other important facts, such as whether there were any victims outside of China.
Apple normally prides itself on its privacy and security, which raises questions of how and why the distributors had access to the database. China has long had problems with Apple IDs being sold on the black market — typically, though, these are stolen by hackers, acquired through methods like phishing schemes.
Earlier this year, a group calling itself the "Turkish Crime Family" tried to hold Apple to ransom, claiming it had access to hundreds of millions of Apple accounts, and the ability to wipe iPhones and iPads. While the hackers said they were paid, Apple insisted that its servers hadn't been breached, and that the account information was "obtained from previously compromised third-party services."
Oliver Haslam
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Sponsored Content
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
7 Comments
This should serve as a good reminder. If you have not yet enabled two-factor authentication, do it now. Last week I received messages of two attempts to log into my icloud account. Wasn't me.
...does this all route back to the premise of the app store introduced in 10.6...? All data roads lead to Apple...? Live by the sword... MacOS Pro ? owncloud.org ?
These were Apple distributors? As in official Apple distributors / dealers? If so then that's just horrible, people maybe had equipment in for repair? I'd like to read some more in depth details of just how this took place.
"…how and why the distributors had access to the database." Could that be because the Chinese government requires access to the database to protect itself from criticism? Cook warned the FBI that could happen here if forced to hack iOS for them in the San Bernardino iPhone 5c case.