<!– CUSTOM Teen Pleads Guilty In Apple Hacking Case
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Kids these days, right?

A little juvenile mischief used to involve shoplifting a pack of gum or spray painting your name on a bridge outside of town. Now, it involves hacking into the world’s first trillion-dollar company, Apple, over the course of about one year.

An unnamed Australian teenager–his name withheld by law enforcement and the courts due to his young age–has entered a guilty plea in a case that even the judge said is too complex to decide right away. According to information seized by law enforcement and investigators, the teen downloaded hacking instructions from the internet, broke into Apple’s network, copied sensitive files and accessed customer accounts, and then shared his exploits with other parties on WhatsApp.

Apple Logo

Why did he do it?

Sadly, according to reports from the offender’s attorney who presumably sourced the information from the youth, the entire operation took place because the hacker loved Apple products and dreamed of working for the company some day.

At this point, the only safe position the company could give the young man will be working the outsourced help desk from prison.

What happens now?

Many countries’ laws go far more leniently on youthful offenders, especially ones who may not have already established criminal records. There’s no word on the expected sentence yet, as the judge has decided the originally scheduled sentencing date of September 20th is too soon to take into consideration all the pertinent factors in the case.

For its part, Apple has been very tight-lipped about the incidents, but did point out that no sensitive or identifying information was accessed in the breach.

A company spokesman told the BBC: “We vigilantly protect our networks and have dedicated teams of information security professionals that work to detect and respond to threats. In this case, our teams discovered the unauthorized access, contained it and reported the incident to law enforcement.” According to Apple, customer accounts are reportedly still secure and no information has been compromised.