At 22, he threatened to hack thousands of iPhones and blackmailed Apple. Now he is the director of a financial company.

The story of Kerem Albayrak is very special. We are talking about a person who tried to blackmail Apple to obtain financial benefits, become a director of a company specializing in the prevention of financial fraud. And also a man who was put on trial for his actions and was ultimately convicted.

As our colleagues from Applesfera note, it all started in 2017. At that time, Albayrak was only 22 years old, but he dared to challenge one of the largest corporations on the planet. He sent an email to Apple, claiming that he had compromised the security of more than 200 million iCloud accounts.

Threat (and condemnation)

As we know, this type of account is the gateway to the Apple ecosystem. This not only allows us to link our devices, but also to use services such as iCloud Drive, photos, search and much more. Well, the main character of this story threatened to sell credentials online or delete a huge number of iPhones.

Albayrak even posted a video of himself on YouTube in which he tried to prove that he was able to gain access to two random accounts. To avoid imminent disaster, the cybercriminal asked the Cupertino company to pay $75,000 in cryptocurrency or a thousand iTunes gift cards of $100 each.

Signing the apple not only did not give what he wanted, but also did not give any reaction, so the young man increased his demands to US$100,000. Albayrak’s attempts to gain financial benefit were unsuccessful as Apple decided to disclose the man’s activities to UK law enforcement.

This action prompted an investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Albayrak’s arrest in March 2017. His smartphone, computers and storage devices were also intercepted, but actual access to millions of iCloud accounts was not proven.

Albayrak, who identified himself as a member of a hypothetical cybercrime group called “Turkish crime family‘, he had credentials for previously compromised services that he found on the Internet. The investigation, in turn, concluded that Apple’s systems were not affected by the cybercriminal’s actions.

Albayrak eventually pleaded guilty to one count of blackmail and two counts of obstructing access to his computer equipment, Bloomberg reported. However, he received a two-year prison sentence, although he was not jailed. Instead, he received a two-year “digital curfew” and 300 hours of unpaid work.

NCA senior investigator Anna Smith said at the time that the man convicted was motivated by a search for “fame and fortune” He himself later admitted that “when you have power on the Internet, it’s like fame, and everyone respects you, and everyone is chasing it now.”

Director OPAC Global

However, Albayrak’s past did not stop him from focusing on other projects. Last year, Insider reported, he was named director of OPAC Global. It is a company that offers protection against fraudulent activity in the financial world through careful analysis and strategic actions.

Interestingly, the company’s website is not working. your official account on X (formerly Twitter) no longer shows messages. We’re not sure what happened, but the latest information we have is that the person who blackmailed Apple has become its director in order to “make significant changes.”

Images | OPAC Global | Blake Connally | Manzana

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