Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), was recently the victim of a blackmail attempt by a British man from London, who claimed to the company that he had hacked the iCloud platform. He asked for iTunes Gift Cards worth $100.000 from Apple in order not to delete the data of 319 million iCloud accounts, which of course was a lie.
Apple reported the blackmail attempt to the US and UK authorities, with the Kingdom's National Crime Investigation Agency taking over the investigation. Its officers arrested Kerem Albayrak in his own house in the north of London, confiscating his phone, computer, and an external storage medium.
The 22-year-old turned out to be the spokesman for a group of hackers called "Turkish Crime Family", according to the British authorities. Apple did not discover any evidence that the iCloud platform was compromised, so it waited for the authorities to do their work, and they discovered the same thing.
“Officers from the NCA's national cyber crime unit arrested Kerem Albayrak at his home address in North London. Digital devices were seized, including his phone, computers and hard drive. NCA investigators found phone records showing Albayrak was the person speaking for a group of hackers calling themselves the 'Family Crime Family'."
The data that the young man from London had would have come from other platforms that were hacked in the past, their services becoming inactive in the meantime. The young man's actions earned him a 2-year prison sentence, which was suspended in order for him to do 300 hours of community service, be under electronic control for 6 months, and not reoffend.
