icloud keychainA Melbourne schoolboy who hacked into Apple's corporate servers on multiple occasions over two years has avoided conviction, reports The Age.

The 19-year-old student, who can't be named for legal reasons as his case is being heard in an Australian Children's Court, earlier pleaded guilty to hacking into Apple's internal systems several times in 2015 and 2016.

The boy's hacking is said to have begun at the age of 16, and involved downloading 90 gigabytes of secure files and accessing customer accounts. His lawyer later told police that the teen "dreamed of" working for Apple.

The magistrate dealing with the case reportedly handed down an eight-month probation order, and said that no conviction would be recorded. The court also heard how the private school boy has since been accepted into university to study criminology and cyber safety.

That international investigation began when Apple detected the unauthorized access and blocked the source of the intrusions. The company notified the FBI, which passed on the information to the Australian Federal Police, resulting in a warrant being executed at the family home last year.

Prosecutors said the raid turned up a "litany of hacking files" in a folder on the boy's computer named "hacky hack hack," as well as devices with IP addresses that matched the source of the intrusions.

Following reports of the case, Apple released a statement to assure customers that at no point during the incident was personal data compromised.

Top Rated Comments

Baumi Avatar
72 months ago
This actually sounds quite sensible - at least if this was really nothing more than a kid taking his experimentation too far.

Better to get him to apply his talents in a legal job than to throw the book at him and ruin his life.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gnasher729 Avatar
72 months ago
From the story:



From Apple's press release:



So either Apple is lying here, or the boy download fake data from a honey pot?
He could have downloaded 90 GB of encrypted customer data with no way to decrypt it. In that case, both the story and the press release are correct.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Grey Area Avatar
72 months ago
19 years old is not a child.
what a weird country.
He is 19 now - the article says he hacked into the servers in 2015 and 2016, so that may all have happened when he was under 18.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Grey Area Avatar
72 months ago
Should have gotten a life sentence.
At least! Plus corporal and capital punishment - a classic Australian booting, followed by stoning with apples!
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ateslik Avatar
72 months ago
Why Apple didn’t detect during at the time?
They were too busy updating the Mac Pro.



HAHAHAHA!!!!! just kidding!!!
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sunday Ironfoot Avatar
72 months ago
From the story:

...downloading 90 gigabytes of secure files and accessing customer accounts.
From Apple's press release:

...assure customers that at no point during the incident was personal data compromised.
So either Apple is lying here, or the boy download fake data from a honey pot?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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