Apple Crime Log: AirTag Rescues Child, iPhone Thieves Caught, and Russian Hackers Wield ‘DarkSword’
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Welcome to the Apple Crime Log, a semi-regular feature where we cover Apple-related crimes. This time around, an Apple AirTag helps track a stolen bike with a sleeping child, a New York man gets caught stealing iPhones in Cali, and Russian hackers target Ukraine iPhone users.
Apple AirTag Helps Police Find Sleeping Child
An Apple AirTag secreted on a stolen bike helped German police recover a stolen bicycle with a missing child on March 24 in Hamburg, reports Der Spiegel.
Parents had left their sleeping four-year-old in a bicycle trailer outside of a Kieler Street shop while they stopped to make a quick purchase. When they exited the store they discovered the bike was gone — along with the connected trailer with the sleeping child in it! The parents contacted the police, and a massive search was soon launched involving several officers in cars, on motorcycles, and a helicopter. (They even had a bear in the air!)
The case has a happy ending, as it was only a matter of minutes before the AirTagged bike was tracked to a nearby DIY store, where it was discovered the child in the trailer was still asleep and uninjured when police arrived.
A 58-year-old woman was detained. Police said the suspect was seemingly drunk, and decided to steal the bike, not knowing there was a sleeping child inside the bike trailer.
While Apple does not promote the AirTag as a way to track your wayward offspring, there have been multiple instances of the tracker helping police retrieve lost humans in addition to stolen items — and sometimes both at the same time, as in this case.
New York Man Charged With iPhone Thefts in Several California Apple Stores
An 18-year-old man from New York was arrested in Southern California on March 18, charged with stealing several iPhones from Apple Stores in the area, reports AppleInsider.
The Irvine Police Department, posted on Instagram that, “an Apple a day keeps the doctor away. Seven stolen iPhones in a backpack get you in handcuffs.” This is not the first Apple pun the Irvine cops have used in Apple-related crimes, and their social media folks really should get a bonus.
Serigne Fallou Niang, 18, from New York, was caught stealing two “Cosmic Orange” iPhones that were on display in the Irvine Spectrum Apple Store.
When a search discovered seven additional iPhones, apparently taken from other SoCal area Apple Stores, Niang was arrested for burglary, grand theft, and receiving stolen property.
Russian Hackers Target Ukrainian iPhone Users
A group of hackers with suspected ties to the Russian government were discovered to be targeting iPhone users in Ukraine. The bad actors used a new hacking toolkit called DarkSword to target the users. Apple recently released a series of iOS patches to block the use of the toolkit for all iPhone models going back to 2015 (earlier models are unaffected, as the toolkit only targets iOS 13 or later).
TechCrunch, citing information from Google Research and security firms iVerify and Lookout, reports that the hackers were members of a group called UNC6353, and “targeted iPhone users in Ukraine with a new set of hacking tools designed to steal their personal data, as well as potentially steal cryptocurrency.”
