July 8, 2010 by James Oliver
A Vietnamese software developer has been banned from Apple’s applications store, following allegations that he has promoted his own publications within online popularity lists. According to iTunes, out of 150 million accounts held by the online music store, 400 accounts were hacked by the developer, in an attempt to promote his own titles on bestseller lists.
Thuat Nguyan, an application developer, gained access to user accounts in order to place comic book applications in to the bestseller lists. He fraudulently hacked credit card details to boost his own sales of applications within iTunes.
Nguyen’s applications occupied 42 spaces within the fifty most popular applications sold within Apple’s site. Apple has released a statement suggesting that the hacker has not compromised servers within iTunes in any way, and only a small percentage of users were affected by the fraudulent activity.
Despite Apple’s statement, they have resolved to tighten security measures around the iTunes site to ensure that this activity cannot be repeated. Nguyen has been removed from the site, for violating the programming licence agreement. Apple have recommended that if anyone feels their credit card has been compromised, they should contact their bank to resolve the issue.
The Chief Technology Officer for Imperva, the security firm, has commented: “It was probably a bogus book and it was just a way to take money from one account and put it in another. If he had kept it out of the top 50 the scam may never have been detected. It is likely the details of iTunes accounts were acquired via a phishing attack or from other compromised accounts such as web mail. We are seeing a trend for hackers targeting accounts such as iTunes and online poker accounts. You can monetise this kind of account very quickly.”
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Best of all, whenever you add something new in iTunes, Apple TV updates automatically. Allman Other
Comment by Allman Other — July 8, 2010 @ 2:21 pm