Apple says its customers’ data wasn’t compromised by an Australian teen’s alleged hacking.
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An Australian teen has pleaded guilty to hacking into Apple’s secure network, but Apple says no customer data was compromised.
The boy accessed Apple’s mainframe from his suburban Melbourne home several times over a year because he was a fan of the US company and dreamed of working there, The Age reports, citing his lawyer.
During these intrusions, he downloaded 90GB of secure files — which he stored in a folder with the title “hacky hack hack” — and accessed customer accounts, the Children’s Court heard on Thursday.
When Apple noticed the hack, it blocked the source and contacted the FBI, who reported it to the Australian Federal Police, according to The Age.
They raided the boy’s home and confiscated two Apple laptops, a mobile phone and a hard drive. The laptops’ serial numbers matched those used to access the system, a prosecutor noted.
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The teen pleaded guilty and will return to court next month for sentencing, our sister site ZDNet reports.
Apple acknowledged the incident in statements to Reuters and The Guardian, reassuring customers that “at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised.”
In June, Apple updated the iPhone’s software to close a security hole that allowed access to customers’ data.
