A 16-year-old hacked Apple and stole 90GB of secure files

BGR Media ^ | August 16th, 2018 | Chris Smith

[LouieFisk]

it turns out that while most hackers might not be able to get into Apple’s servers, a sixteen-year-old Australian with a passion for Apple managed to do it, stealing some 90GB of secure files and accessing customer accounts in the process. The best part is that he stored it all in a folder called “hacky hack hack.”

[LouieFisk]

"hacky hack hack", lol.

[a fool in paradise]

Sounds like Croupy Hillary Clinton attempting to make a speech

[P.O.E.]

Hack, hackity hack hack
2 bits.....

[BullDog108]

PING!

[familyop]

“Secure files,” eh?

[Rebelbase]

The kid’s got a future.

[LouieFisk]

The kinda whiz kid Apple should put on the payroll - as long as they keep an eye on him!

[Rebelbase]

Kevin Mitnick the notorious hacker of the 90’s makes a nice living as a consultant today.

Frank W. Abagnale the ‘catch me if you can’ guy had a long career working for the FBI.

[BradyLS]

What? Not Hacky McHackface?

[BradyLS]

Yeah. And folks at work think I’m nuts because I’m not totally convinced of the security of “cloud servers.” Oh, I’ll throw the files into any cloud they want me to. Just wouldn’t surprise me if the cloud evaporated or blew away with all the files in it.

Then I really _would_ be yelling at the clouds! :-D

[Jemian]

Let me get this straight. He stole 90 gig? Really?

90 gig is nothing. I have much more capacity than that on my laptop. He put the files in Hacky Hack Hack? That kid was showing off! He knew he'd be found out. He is applying for a job!

[dragnet2]

Apple insecurity...☺

[dragnet2]

90 gig is nothing? I would imagine letter data and numbers in print, not images etc, would be quite a bit of data.

[Falconspeed]

I agree. Hire the kid. Sharp as a tack.

[BTerclinger]

Back up
Back up
and back up

(either 2 clouds and an eternal hard drive, or 2 external hard drives & the cloud).

Pay for the drives/ service, or pay more other someone try and recover data.

[Swordmaker]

16 year old hacked into Apple's servers and took90GBs of files. This is an old story on the hacking as it refers to the release of older iOS source code files stolen and released last year. It's only being released now that the hacker who did it was a sixteen year old Australian boy who did it because he wanted to work for Apple. That last part WAS revealed as the hacker's motive last year. One notable thing revealed in this BGR article is "He also had access to authorized keys, the kind that grant log-in access to users and should be extremely secure." This means what he did was NOT A HACK. I suspect he stole the name and password of an Apple Administrator who had the authority to access the servers, most likely a close relative, as those passwords are changed frequently and it says he had access for more than a year, so he knew where this administrator wrote down the new passwords. This just makes him a sneak thief. —PING!

Apple Not Really "Hacking" Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[cynwoody]

it turns out that while most hackers might not be able to get into Apple’s servers, a sixteen-year-old Australian with a passion for Apple managed to do it, stealing some 90GB of secure files and accessing customer accounts in the process.

Julian Assange was only 16 when he started out hacking.

[Swordmaker]

I agree. Hire the kid. Sharp as a tack.

Not really. . . he physically stole some local Australian Apple administrator's ID access codes and passwords. . . that's the ONLY WAY he could have "had access to authorized keys, the kind that grant log-in access to users and should be extremely secure."

The passwords are not stored on the Servers. . . so he could not have "hacked in to get those data. The ONLY way to acquire one other than be issued a set from Apple as an authorized Apple server administrator, is to get it from the only person who knows it, the Apple Server Administrator User who already has a set of those authorized ID Keys and passwords. Even Apple will not know that user's passwords... and even Apple cannot find what they are because the user entered passwords are only compared with a stored oneway hash.

[dayglored]

Hi Swordmaker, thanks for the ping.

As usual, alleged tech urinalists can't tell the difference between their backend and an outhouse trench.

If this kid stole high-priv keys, then this was only a "hack" in the original MIT -complimentary- sense of "that was a good hack", i.e. the stealing of the keys was likely a risking and exciting adventure.

OTOH, using those stolen keys to gain unauthorized access is merely ... a criminal act, at least under most circumstances.

But it let some asshat urinalist put "Apple" and "hacked" in the same headline.

*clickbait* *clickbait* *clickbait* *clickbait*

[ProtectOurFreedom]

90 GB is nothing in the context of the exabytes they are storing. Of course, most of that is music and video files.

But, for regular citizen documents, its the entire lives of 100 to 1,000 people.