13-Year-Old Student Hacked Apple in Hopes of Getting Hired

A 17-year-old teenager in Adelaide, Australia, has admitted in juvenile court to hacking several systems, including Apple’s servers. According to his lawyer, the teen was only 13 years old at the time of the hack and had no malicious intent—he simply wanted to get noticed and offered a job by the company.

Court documents reveal that, together with another student from Melbourne, the defendant accessed Apple’s networks twice (in December 2015 and early 2017), downloading internal documentation and data. The defendant’s lawyer, Mark Twiggs, stated that due to his young age, his client did not fully understand the seriousness of his actions. He had heard of a similar case in Europe where a person who hacked a company’s network was later offered a job by that company.

Twiggs asked the court to acquit the teenager, as he plans to attend university to study cybersecurity and forensics, and a criminal record could hinder his future employment in the field.

Judge David White decided not to record a conviction, instead ordering the teenager to pay a $500 fine. White acknowledged that the student is highly regarded at school for his achievements and, since the Apple incident, has used his technical skills only for good.

According to ABC, Apple suffered no damage as a result of the teenagers’ actions. The company declined to comment on the situation but provided the same press release as last year:

“At Apple, we take the security of our networks very seriously. We have dedicated information security teams that detect and address threats. In this particular case, our teams identified unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement. We consider the security of our users’ data one of our top priorities and want to assure our customers that their personal data was not compromised as a result of this incident.”