TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

'Hacky hack hack': Australia teen breaches Apple's secure network

News Desk (Agence France-Presse)
Sydney, Australia
Fri, August 17, 2018

Share This Article

Change Size

'Hacky hack hack': Australia teen breaches Apple's secure network People queue up for new iPhone X sits outside an Apple showroom in Sydney on November 3, 2017. Apple iPhone X went for sale in Australia with long queues outside the Apple stores. SAEED KHAN / AFP (AFP/Saeed Khan)

A

schoolboy who "dreamed" of working for Apple hacked the firm's computer systems, Australian media has reported, although the tech giant said Friday no customer data was compromised.

The Children's Court of Victoria was told the teenager broke into Apple's mainframe -- a large, powerful data processing system -- from his home in the suburbs of Melbourne and downloaded 90GB of secure files, The Age reported late Thursday.

The boy, then aged 16, accessed the system multiple times over a year as he was a fan of Apple and had "dreamed of" working for the US firm, the newspaper said, citing his lawyer.

Apple said in a statement Friday that its teams "discovered the unauthorised access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement".

The firm, which earlier this month became the first private-sector company to surpass US$1 trillion in market value, said it wanted "to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised".

An international investigation was launched after the discovery involving the FBI and the Australian Federal Police, The Age reported.

The federal police said it could not comment on the case as it is still before the court. 

The Age said police raided the boy's home last year and found hacking files and instructions saved in a folder called "hacky hack hack".

"Two Apple laptops were seized and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems," a prosecutor was reported as saying. 

A mobile phone and hard drive were also seized whose IP address matched those detected in the breaches, he added.

The teen has pleaded guilty and the case is due to return to court for his sentencing next month.

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.