A teen from Australia pleads guilty for downloading up to 90GB of confidential files from Apple's internal systems and accessing users accounts consecutively from his suburban home.
A young teenager in Melbourne, Australia, repeatedly hack into Apple’s computer systems and downloaded approximately 90 gigabytes of confidential files and accessed customer accounts before he was caught according to a report on Thursday by The Age, which cited court proceedings.
The teenaged hacker was an Apple fan who dreamed of working for the company, said by the newspaper. The teen pleaded guilty, with sentencing set for next month.
Apple last year informed the FBI, who in turn take charge of the case with Australian authorities. A prosecutor said that Apple was “very sensitive about publicity,” by keeping the case out of the media until the court proceedings this week.
No one can tell how widespread the breaches was, what type of accounts or other information were accessed, or whether the breach was worldwide or in any way localized to Australia, aside from the 90 gigabytes of data.
Apple is yet to comment on the case, and the name of the young hacker was not released for legal reasons.
The young hacker’s home was raided last year by authorities who found his files in a computer folder marked “hacky hack hack.” Australian Federal Police also seized two Apple laptops and found that the accused had obtained “authorized keys” to access Apple’s systems.
No report on whether the acquired data was provided to third parties, though the hacker communicated with others on Whatsapp about the intrusion, but the content of the conversations was not released.
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