LONDON – A 22-year-old Turkish hacker tried to blackmail Apple to the tune of $75,000. He pleaded guilty to the offense in London on Friday (via Bloomberg News).
Hacker Pleads Guilty
Kerem Albayrak told Apple he would delete a database that contained 319 million iCloud and other Apple accounts. He demanded either $75,000 in crypto-currency or 1000 iTunes gift cards worth $1000 each. Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), described the hacker as a “fame-hungry cyber-criminal.” Mr. Albrayrak claimed to speak on behalf of a Turkish crime family. He reportedly told investigators that “when you have power on the internet it’s like fame and everyone respects you, and everyone is chasing that right now.”
It is understood that Apple’s network was not compromised. Mr. Albrayak simply had data from a previously-compromised third-party database. He received a two-year suspended sentence, a six-month electronic curfew, and 300 hours of unpaid work.
Charlotte:
This reads like Mini Me’s not-so-excellent adventure.
I don’t suppose that this would-be master mind considered that a tech company, like Apple, that pays an extortionist using their own gift cards could use those same cards to track, unmask and apprehend said extortionist. If Apple were run by sadists, they could have paid him just to mess with him before having him arrested (instead of getting that $25,000 Mac Pro, he gets an iPad Smart Cover – just one).
If this were an Aesop fable, perhaps the moral of the story would be, if you’re going to attempt to extort the world’s most valuable company by market cap, yet demand only $75,000, anticipate a very short life of crime.
In other words the court said “Yes you tried to extort Apple, but you are really an unskilled poser and wannabe script kiddie who really couldn’t do anything. Your @$$ isn’t worth spending the money locking up.”
That’s gotta be the worst punishment of all.