'Hacker' who blackmailed Apple spared jail

A 22-year-old cyber-criminal, Kerem Albayrak from north London, has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence and ordered to do 300 hours of unpaid work after the conclusion of an investigation which found that he had hot compromised Apple systems.

Kerem Albayrak had been arrested on March 28 – 2017 by UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) from his home about two weeks after sending his threat. He blackmailed Apple to give iTunes gift cards worth $100,000 (£76,000) in order to prevent his 319 million iCloud account from being wiped out by him.

The ‘hacker’ had also threatened to sell the account information, dump his database online and reset the accounts, unless Apple paid his iTunes gift card demand. The man had admitted charges against him for blackmailing the multi-national corporation.

However, the latest probe found that the man had not compromised Apple’s systems, BBC reported. Apple investigated his claims but could not find evidence that its systems had been compromised.

In addition to the 300 hours of unpaid work, he has been given a six month electronic curfew.

“Albayrak wrongly believed he could escape justice after hacking in to two accounts and attempting to blackmail a large multi-national corporation,” said Anna Smith, a senior investigative officer for the NCA.

Background

In March 2017, Albayrak emailed Apple’s security team, claiming to have breached millions of iCloud accounts. He posted a video on YouTube that appeared to show him breaking in to two accounts.

He threatened to sell the account information, dump his database online and reset the accounts, unless Apple paid his iTunes gift card demand. Albayrak also said he would accept $75,000 worth of crypto-currency, but later increased this to $100,000.