Hacker avoids prison for 2017 iCloud blackmail attempt
Kerem Albayrak, 22 from North London, pleaded guilty to one count of blackmail to a Southwark Crown Court on December 2, and previously admitted to two related counts of "unauthorized acts with intent to impair the operation of or prevent/hinder access to a computer." In sentencing on Friday, the court gave Albayrak a two-year suspended jail term, along with an order to perform 300 hours of volunteer work and a six-month electronic curfew.
The attempted blackmail took place in March 2017, by a group called the "Turkish Crime Family." According to the UK National Crime Agency, which investigated the crime in collaboration with authorities in the US, Albayrak was the spokesperson for the hacker collective.
The group threatened Apple with the factory reset of 319 million iCloud accounts, as well as dumping collected databases online if the demand was not met. After contacting Apple Security with the initial threat and not receiving an adequate response within a week, he doubled the demand to $75,000 in cryptocurrency or one thousand $100 iTunes gift cards.
