A Chinese website is selling stolen iTunes account details, allowing buyers to download around £130 of music, movies and apps for just £20.
China’s Global Times reports that taobao.com, the country’s largest online store, was selling some 50,000 accounts for prices ranging from 1 to 200 yuan, about 10p to £20.
Buyers are promised access to accounts credited with up to £130 and have to make their purchases as quickly as possible, before the account’s owner spots the unauthorised transactions — usually when they receive the first email receipt from Apple.
“Of course these accounts are hacked, otherwise how could they be so cheap?”, a customer service representative of one of the online stores admitted to the Global Times, though he wouldn’t say how the details were obtained.
The accounts may have been hacked, though it’s equally likely that usernames and passwords were obtained via a phishing attack or a trojan horse infection of Windows iTunes users.
Apple confirmed last year that 400 iTunes accounts had been hacked by a developer, Thuat Nguyen, who was subsequently banned from the iOS App Store.
The company hasn’t commented on the latest security breach, though its China office told Global Times that users need to “better safeguard their account information”.
