A hacker, who claimed to be a member of the Turkish Crime Family, has pleaded guilty for trying to blackmail Apple and threaten to delete hundreds of millions of account details on iCloud. The self-proclaimed hacker, Kerem Albayrak, was reportedly sentenced to a two-year jail term on December 20 in London, along with 300 hours of unpaid work and an electronic curfew for six months.
He reportedly threatened to factory reset more than 319 iCloud accounts, effectively holding iPhone user data to ransom, as well as ‘other’ Apple accounts.
“While iPhone users have recently been warned that they need to update to iOS 13.3 or risk getting locked out of their devices, Albayrak proposed to delete their data instead,” reports said.
Apple reportedly contacted law enforcement agencies in the US and the National Crime Agency (NCA) led the investigation in the UK.
In March 2017, the National Cyber Crime Unit arrested Albayrak at his home in north London. The team also seized his digital devices, such as smartphones, computers, and hard drives.
*Edited from an IANS report.