Apple Hasn't Been Breached After Hackers Threaten to Attack Millions of iPhones

Earlier this week, a group of hackers that calls itself ''Turkish Crime Family'' claimed it had breached hundreds of millions of accounts of Apple users and had a result the ability to destroy all stored user data by accessing the associated devices remotely. The group demanded a ransom for the hijacked accounts in the amount of $75,000 worth of Bitcoins, or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards, whereby the deadline for fulfilling these conditions was set on April 7, 2017.

The cyber criminals claimed they had notified the company of the breach, but got no adequate response from Apple's security team. The story raised a lot of turmoil as the hackers reached out to reporters from tech site Motherboard, showing them one of the emails from their correspondence with Apple.

It could be that the hackers received no satisfying answer, yet Apple went public with the issue as well today. The company's representatives state that there have not been any breaches in any of the company systems, including Apple ID or iCloud.

As for the list of compromised emails and passwords that the hackers showed to the reporters from Motherboard, Apple explains that these have been acquired from some previously compromised third-party services. Some of the details of this threat against Apple seem, in fact, very suspicious.

Researchers comment that if the hackers actually had all the power to wipe off Apple users' devices, reset iCloud accounts, and compromise Apple services to that extent, they would hardly demand a ransom of only $75,000. More likely, they were merely hoping the company would just pay the amount that looks like pocket cash for a corporation of that rank, without even bothering to investigate the threat any further.

Also raising doubt in the validity of the criminals' claims is the fact they were very inconsistent regarding the number of accounts they say they have compromised, going from 300 million to 600 million in some of their messages.

While the criminals behind ''Turkish Crime Family'' have not yet been identified, Apple says it is currently working with the law enforcement agencies to find out who the criminals are. Finally, the company claims it is closely monitoring all its systems to ensure that the users' accounts are sufficiently protected from unauthorized access. But users can also take steps to protect their accounts.

Experts advise Apple service and device users to turn on two-factor authentication for every online service for which this option is available. Using strong combinations of symbols when setting up a password is another step to consider, as well as using different passwords for every account that you use over the Internet.