An Australian teenager has pleaded guilty to hacking Apple’s system multiple times in a span of several months, but will not be going to gaol. He said he did it because he’s just a huge Apple fanboy.
The Age reported that Apple had alerted the FBI after the company detected a breach. Then authorities notified the Australian Federal Police, which raided the teen’s home. There agents found 90GB of sensitive files in a folder titled “hacky hack hack”.
A magistrate told the court that the teen (not named for legal reasons) exploited a VPN intended for remote connection, according to Bloomberg. Apple reportedly blocked his access in November 2016, but he regained access last year.
Apple did not immediately respond to a Gizmodo request for comment, but in a statement to Bloomberg Apple said that customers’ personal data was not compromised.
The teen’s lawyer said at the boy’s appearance at Children’s Court in August that he hacked Apple “because he was such a fan” of the company, according to The Age. Bloomberg reports the teen told police that he breached Apple’s systems, in part, because he enjoyed “just being in the corporation pretending you were employees”, and the activity was apparently addictive.
According to Bloomberg, the magistrate told the court that the teenager had shown remorse and had cooperated with law enforcement, and would only be given an eight-month probation instead of gaol time.
“Your offending is serious,” the magistrate said to the teen, according to Bloomberg. “It was sustained, sophisticated, and a successful attack on the security of a major multinational corporation.”
The teen was 16 when he first accessed Apple’s system. According to The Age, he is now 19 and has been accepted at a university where he plans on studying criminology and cyber security.