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Technology ICloud

Apple brushes off threat by hackers to erase millions of iPhones

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By John Glenday | Reporter

March 23, 2017 | 2 min read

Apple has dismissed out of hand unsubstantiated claims made by an unknown group of hackers who claim to have obtained access to hundreds of millions of iCloud accounts, pointing out that none of its systems had been breached.

A group calling itself the Turkish Crime Family claimed to have stolen account details of up to 300m iCloud users and demanded a payment of $75,000 Bitcoins or $100k in iTunes gift cards by 7 April or reset each and every one of them, remotely deleting linked Apple devices in the process.

However a list of email addresses and passwords supplied by the group to back up their threat was debunked by Apple, which said it ‘appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party devices.’

The claims were first reported on Motherboard which spoke to an individual claiming to be a member of the hacker group who flagged up a YouTube video of members accessing an unknown woman’s iCloud account.

It is believed that the data in question was sourced from a 2012 LinkedIn data breach however, with Apple merely reminding its customers to use strong, unique passwords and utilize two-factor authentication.

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