A teenager in Australia was able to hack Apple’s servers for about a year, stealing over 90GB of data (and, amazingly, storing it in a folder called “hacky hack hack”) from a company that is constantly reminding the world its products deliver privacy and security for user data. Details about the hack were published earlier this week in Australia, but probably only because the kid pleaded guilty and he’s awaiting sentencing as we speak. Actual details about the hack were not revealed, but Apple says that personal user data was not compromised during the breach.
An Apple spokesman told Reuters that the company’s security personnel “discovered the unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement” without revealing any actual specifics. The spokesperson did address user data security concerns by saying that “we … want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised.”
Yes, that’s precisely the kind of response we’d expect from a tech company, especially Apple, which is always very secretive about everything.
There’s no reason to worry at this point, not because Apple says so, but because we had no other reports from security researchers or affected users detailing any massive iPhone/Apple ID hacks. As long as you’re not getting any prompts about your account being hacked, you’re fine. But you can always change that Apple ID password. You know, especially if you use the same credentials with other services.
While it’s unclear what the 16-year-old kid managed to steal from Apple’s servers, a previous report stated that he had access to authorized keys which would have granted him access to user accounts. That’s all we know about the incident at this time.
