(WSVN) - Hackers say they have access to over 500 million iCloud accounts, and are demanding a ransom from Apple.
According to Fortune Magazine, the hackers call themselves the “Turkish Crime Family.” They say they have a list of compromised login credentials, and are threatening to remotely wipe hundreds of millions of iPhones of all their data, unless Apple pays them.
The group gave the tech giant a deadline of April 7 to pay $75,000 in bitcoin, or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards, Vice blog Motherboard reported.
For its part, Apple says that, if the hackers’ alleged list is real, it was not taken from the company.
“There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID,” a spokesperson told Fortune. “The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services.”
A person familiar with the supposed compromised data said many of the hacked emails and passwords matched a previous breach at LinkedIn back in 2012.
“To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication,” the Apple spokesperson said.
Customers are urged to change their passwords to unique codes for each service they use.
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