Apple has denied that there have been breaches of any of its systems, including iCloud and Apple ID.
The company was responding of its own volition to a story carried by iTWire this morning, stating that a group of hackers or a lone hacker was threatening to reset a cache of millions of iCloud accounts and remotely wipe Apple devices unless a ransom was paid before 7 April.
iTWire did not contact Apple for comment in the morning as the company normally does not respond to such requests.
Motherboard, the site which carried the story first, says that Apple did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
{loadposition sam08}But this afternoon, an Apple spokesperson contacted iTWire with the denial.
The hackers had demanded US$75,000 in either of two digital currencies, Bitcoin or Ethereum, or US$100,000 in iTunes gift cards as a ransom, and offered to delete the entire cache of data if the demand was met.
The Apple spokesperson said: "There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID."
The spokesperson claimed that the alleged list of email addresses and passwords that the hackers had described and also displayed in part to a reporter appeared to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services.
No detail was given as to which third-party services had been previously compromised.
Apple has placed great emphasis on the security of its products, especially after a stoush with the FBI last year when it refused to help break the encryption on an iPhone which had been used by a terrorist who took part in attacks in San Bernardino, California.
The spokesperson said Apple was "actively monitoring" to prevent unauthorised access to user accounts and also working with law enforcement to identify "the criminals involved".
"To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication," the spokesperson added.
When iTWire contacted the spokesperson and asked why Motherboard had not received a response despite making multiple requests, the response was that it was a US site and it was left to American Apple employees to deal with it.
However, iTWire was invited to send in any questions and the following was emailed across:
What third-party services have user details from iCloud and Apple mail accounts?
Doesn't Apple run these services on its own?
Or are they outsourced?
If so, are they outsourced within the US or outside the US?
Is this done for reasons of efficiency or to save money?
This story will be updated if Apple happens to respond.