Stefan Mileschin

Former penal colony kid wanted to work for the company

A Melbourne schoolboy who repeatedly broke into Apple’s secure computer systems is facing criminal charges after the technology giant called in the FBI.

The teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke into Apple’s mainframe from his suburban home on multiple occasions over a year because he was such a fan of the company, a court was told.

The Children’s Court heard on Thursday that he had downloaded 90GB of secure files and accessed customer accounts.

His offending from the age of 16 saw him develop computerised tunnels and online bypassing systems to hide his identity until a raid on his family home uncovered a litany of hacking files and instructions all saved in a folder titled “hacky hack hack”.

The Crown prosecutor also acknowledged that Apple was “very sensitive about publicity”.

The Australian Federal Police executed a search warrant on the teen’s home last year, the court heard.

“Two Apple laptops were seized, and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems. A mobile phone and hard drive were also seized and the IP address ... matched the intrusions into the organisation. The purpose was to connect remotely to the company’s internal systems.”

Apparently Apple’s security was so superior that the schoolboy could use “authorised keys” as part of his offending. He then used Whatsapp to communicate his offending to others.

The court heard the access “worked flawlessly” until the teen was caught. He later told police he had “dreamed of” working for Apple. After all you would think a company would like to know the crucial areas where it is weak such as software, security and networking.

The magistrate acknowledged the teen’s guilty plea and stood the matter down until next month for sentencing, due to the case’s complexities.

https://fudzilla.com/news/network/46...ple-s-security