Man claims to be behind Apple's developer portal hack

Apple's developer site has been hacked by a Turkish hacker who claims he was just exposing a flaw in the system.

The online portal, which allows developers to download beta versions of Mac OS and iOS for testing and discussion in forums, has been down since Thursday - without a good deal of explanation.

However, a Turkish hacker, or 'security researcher' as he calls himself, Ibrahim Balic, has come forward and claimed he is behind the hack. He insists that his intentions were honest and that he wanted to expose a flaw that he'd previously flagged up to Apple, with no response.

Speaking to the Guardian, Balic said: "My intention was not attacking. In total I found 13 bugs and reported [them] directly one by one to Apple straight away. Just after my reporting [the] dev center got closed. I have not heard anything from them, and they announced that they got attacked. My aim was to report bugs and collect the datas [sic] for the purpose of seeing how deep I can go with it."

We can rebuild it, we have the technology

Apple didn't confirm, or even acknowledge, Balic's claims but it said that it is "completely overhauling" the developer portal and rebuilding the entire database from the ground up. There's no indication of when the portal will be back up, however.

Around 275,000 logins were reportedly put at risk by the hack and if Balic's claims are true, it will be interesting to see how Apple reacts.

Via The Guardian