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Exclusive: Steve Jobs’ Amazon.com Account Hacked, Hacker Claims

jobs_at_computer

CC-licensed picture by Ben Stanfield.

A hacker claims to have broken into Steve Jobs’ private Amazon.com account.

The hacker is trying to sell details of Jobs’ Amazon.com account to journalists, including Jobs’ purchase history for several years and his credit card number.

According to the hacker, who identifies himself as “orin0co,” Jobs is an avid online shopper. Jobs has purchased 20,000 items from Amazon.com in the last 10 years, the hacker says. That’s 2,000 items a year, or more than 5 items a day, every day.

“I got myself a hold of this information,” the hacker wrote in an email sent from a secure Hushmail account. “No one else has it. I didn’t misuse it, otherwise Mr. Jobs would long ago change his login detail, wouldn’t he?”

The hacker claims he sent Jobs a phony but official-looking email that tricked him into logging onto a fake Amazon.com website — a common phishing tactic.

The hacker said the scam is an embarrassment for Apple, which claims Macs are less susceptible to “viruses, crashes and headaches.” (See Apple’s new “Elimination” ad).

“Imagine how safe Mac is if you can trick the mighty Steve Jobs,” orin0co wrote.

If true, Jobs would be the latest victim of so-called “whaling” or “spear phishing” attacks: online scams carefully targeted to snare high-worth victims like well-known CEOs or celebrities.

Ryan Olson, director of the Rapid Response Team at iDefense, the security company that publicized whaling in June last year, said it was possible that Jobs had fallen victim to a targeted attack.

“Yeah, I think it’s plausible,” he said. “It would not be hard to get a lot of his information because he’s a celebrity.”

Apple didn’t respond to requests confirming or denying the orin0co’s claims, or a request for comment. Amazon.com said it had no knowledge whether Jobs’ account had been compromised or not.

“I had not heard any rumors about Steve Jobs’ Amazon account being compromised as a result of a phish,” said Patty Smith, director of Amazon.com’s corporate communications, in an email. “We have a good deal of information on our web site designed to educate our customers about the various phishing scams, and ways that they can protect themselves.” (Here’s the link).

The hacker claimed that neither Jobs nor Amazon knew about his break in because it hadn’t been detected. He sent a screenshot of what appears to be Jobs’ account at Amazon.com. The screenshot shows three purchases, although details have been blanked out: A Blu-Ray DVD, a HBO miniseries on DVD, and a copy of The Nuclear Express, a history of the nuclear bomb.

Here’s the screenshot. Hit the thumbnail for the fullsize version.

A screenshot purporting to show Steve Jobs' Amazon.com account

Whaling attacks reached a peak in the Spring last year, iDefense claims, when a pair of professional hacker gangs targeted senior executives at companies, legal firms and government agencies.

Instead of spamming millions with scattershot email scams, the gangs targeted high-worth corporate executives with cleverly-crafted emails full of personal details. The executives received messages that appeared to come from the Better Business Bureau, Internal Revenue Service, or Federal Trade Commission, among others.

Following a link, or opening an attachment, the phony email installed a keylogger or even the full Apache server on the victim’s machine. The crooks would then monitor the computer for corporate and bank passwords. The scam claimed more than 15,000 corporate victims in 15 months, iDefense said, and netted “millions of dollars.”

There were 10 million victims of identity fraud in the U.S. in 2008, according to a report from Javelin Research (PDF). Amazon.com is a frequent target of phishing attacks.

However, there’s a few things that make orin0co’s story fishy.

The biggest problem is there’s no proof. Apple isn’t talking. It seems unlikely that Jobs would fall for such an elementary scam, and screenshots are easily faked.

Nor does it seem likely that Jobs is such an out-of-control online shopper; 20,000 items beggars belief. In addition, the screenshot, which purportedly shows Jobs’ most recently purchased items, includes only three purchases over the busy holiday period, and the last visible purchase is dated October 2008.

Nonetheless, here’s the email exchange with orin0co:

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

Hi,
The reason am writing to you is that your book is among first to
sell in amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/steve-jobs-Books/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Steve%20Jobs&rh=n%3A266239%2Ck%3ASteve%20Jobs&page=1

I will try to be as short as possible:

2 years ago, I set a amazon.com fake page, and sent emails to different IT people around the globe. Among some other unknown person, Steve Jobs got my mail, he didn’t notice the scam I set so he “updated” his amazon account with data( name, address, credit card number, phone, amazon user and password) which I received, sent to my mail.

Now, it was not my intention to misuse his account (which is still untouched!), the sole purpose was if the “scam” was so perfect that even IT Guru’s will fall on it.

I saw you are the bestseller with a book on S.Jobs, I still have access on his amazon.com account, with all his purchase/interest details for 6-7 years. Now I just checked again, and he didn’t use it since December 22 last year, for reasons known to us.

I intent to sell this information, that’s why I picked you as first on the list.

If you are not interested, am sure other book authors on SJ life (Jeffrey Young, William Simon, Alan Deutschman, Anthony Imbimbo, Daniel Lyons or any others) will be very interested to know about this.

Hope to hear from you,

Regards

p.s. I can provide “print screens” logged in SJ amazon account.

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Charset: UTF8
Version: Hush 3.0

Intrigued by the first email, I asked orin0co how much he hoped to charge for the information and how he would prove it was genuine. He replied:

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

Dear Mr. Kahney,

First of all, if this news makes headlines it will bring some serious troubles for Mac as such, knowing about medial battle between Microsoft and Apple. Imagine how safe Mac is if you can trick the mighty Steve Jobs, what about other user?

Second, as you can see from the print screen, there is a documentation of Jobs purchases for over 10 years, some 20.000 items he bought online.

Now I’m not in a position to convince anyone how important for someone that writes biography or book is to get a hold of such vital information? I mean c’mon, what do you guys know about him?

Now you say this is illegal, well Mr. Kahney, I got myself a hold of this information. No one else has it. I didn’t misuse it, otherwise Mr. Jobs would long ago change his login detail, wouldn’t he?

You get this chance because you were the first on the amazon book selling list. I know you are a serious person, I saw you are editor on wired. Am sure there are lots of guys out there that would die to get a hold of this, we both know what this is.

It is not my intention to sell this for small money. If you are not in a position or not interested to buy it then I wish you a good day, I will have to ask elsewhere.

Attached you will find the “print screen” made today. File is password protected, with your surname(first letter is capital).

Wish you a good day

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Charset: UTF8
Version: Hush 3.0

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

60 comments

    Someone will pay for this info.

    that guy is no hacker….he’s more like a hack.

    setting up a fake page and sending emails is just plain retarded. Sure there are people that probably fell for it, but this guy is a douche for calling himself a hacker

    This scammer is an idiot. Steve Jobs responding to a phishing scheme has absolutely NOTHING to do with the security of the OS X operating system. I don’t buy it for a second, because if this man is clever enough to compose documents to trick someone as bright as Jobs, why does he make 4th grade grammatical mistakes? And why did he decide that the people most well-positioned to offer money for this are authors of books about Steve Jobs? This person may very well have schemed his way into Jobs’ Amazon account, but he still sounds like a complete moron, and I hope he gets arrested and sentenced to repeating elementary school to reinforce writing and basic reasoning skills.

    wouldn’t trying to sell this information be ‘misusing’ it. And I really wonder about the validity of the information. hasn’t Jobs said over and over that Blu-ray is a big bag of hurt. so why would he have one on his list. recently even. and I know the guy is rich but come on, that many items. tad insane. Steve is probably given stuff from everywhere like the celeb actors get.

    plus there’s the issue of the credit card number. that has to be some kind of illegal.
    and last. just cause the CEO might be dumb enough to fall for a phish doesn’t mean that macs are less than perfect. just that their users are.

    honestly I think it is a scam and this ‘hacker’ faked those shots

    If orin0co doesn’t have a better grasp of the English language when he’s building spoof Amazon sites than he does when he’s writing emails to cult of mac, it’s hard to believe Jobs would fall for it. “Now I’m not in a position to convince anyone how important for someone that writes biography or book is to get a hold of such vital information?” doesn’t have the same breezy style of most Amazon copy I’ve read.

    “Please be kindly updating your personal informations, Mr. Jobs! Amazon is to be moving to the Eastern Europe.”

    Guys, I just hacked Bill Gate’s amazon:
    http://i39.tinypic.com/4gn1j9.jpg

    “The screenshot shows three purchases, although details have been blanked out: A Blu-Ray DVD, a HBO miniseries on DVD, and a copy of The Nuclear Express, a history of the nuclear bomb.”

    You had me until the Blu-Ray DVD. No way Steve Jobs would be buying himself a bag of hurt.

    The thumbnail is not clickable => use this address to get the large version:
    http://cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/jobs_amazon_screenshot.jpg

    Almost makes me wonder if the “password” protected screenshot he sent you may have had a payload as well….it’s kinda hard to trust a thief and a scam artist isn’t it?

    Yeah, the hacker who stole the info. What an idiot; this just goes to show how elementary most hackers are mentally. You think Amazon can’t track IP addresses of who logs onto the count, with time stamps? Don’t tug on Superman’s cape! This guy is going to jail.

    It’s Steve Jobs alright. Steve Jobs from Atlanta. Runs a small candy store there.

    Yep, Macs ARE less prone to viruses, crashes and headaches. But a Mac (end user) is just as vulnerable to phishing as another PC (end user).

    No embarrassment here for Apple, maybe Steve…

    I am imagine someone as resourceful as Steve Jobs will hunt down this idiot IF it is true. Difficult to imagine anyone buys 5 items a day let alone Steve Jobs – from the main competition to iTunes.

    Next up, pictures of Steve Jobs house filled with Dell Computers running Windows 7?

    Kind of convenient that he marked out all the parts of the screenshot that would corroborate his story, no? However, if it is fake, the “hacker” at least put a little thought into it — Jobs would indeed likely have an Amazon Prime account.

    Nice scoop, but it could really use a nut graf.

    Anyone check if those movies are available on iTunes? If so, I’d imagine him watching it there instead…

    “Now I just checked again, and he didn’t use it since December 22 last year, for reasons known to us.”

    He stopped buying books and DVDs online because he’s on medical leave. Right, that makes total sense.

    It’s likely a fake.

    1. Anyone can change their name to “Steve Jobs”. Amazon doesn’t validate names. It proves nothing. The screenshot can also be easily photoshopped.
    2. Hushmail is open in the other tab. A true hacker wouldn’t want to reveal what email address they have recently used and wouldn’t put that in their screenshot. Why narrow things down?
    3. Real hacker would show something more definitive such as a printable receipt or two with the last four digits of a CC and an address.

    Umm….also, more than one Steve Jobs exists – hell, there are nine alone in California. Which one is this?

    I’m pretty sure Amazon will only give you the last 4 digits of a CC number. If he claims to have the whole thing, then this is clearly fake.

    The URL doesn’t match the content of the page. You can check this with your own Amazon account.

    @Steve. Can you explain what you mean? How so exactly?

    As an author I know you’d be interested in this. I used a simple phishing scheme to get access to Barak Obama’s Amazon account. Obama has purchased 38,000 items from Amazon. So much for him being a common ordinary person. I’ve included a screenshot of his last purchase — a VHS cassette of “Wag the Dog” and a Kindle book, “Economics for Dummies”.

    He stopped purchasing January 19, 2009. Of course we know why.

    Just imagine how safe the world is if he can fall for simple schemes like that. Once you purchase his Amazon purchase record, I can sell you the code to the atomic football. This information is potentially embarrassing — what with him being the ruler of the free world and all.

    I’m not using this information for evil. No one knows about this, except for you. There are lots of other people who would love to have this information. So if you don’t send a bucked of money to my account in Nigeria, I’ll just sell it to FoxNews.

    Note the edit on the lower right hand corner of the pic right where the Firebug icon sits. http://getfirebug.com/ Making it easy to fake page screen shots.

    Your pal,

    Steve

    @Kahney. Steve means when you login to your amazon account and go to the order history page it is a different URL then what is shown in the screen shot. Also when I log in it says hello (my first name) not my first and last name. Also it says Not (first name)? not the first and last name like in the screenshot.

    This is clearly a windoze person trying to put the hate on Apple

    I hate 13 year olds that think they know photoshop and try and do this s***!

    Leander, the URL for this page on Amazon will be:
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/history/view.html/ref=ya__43_d?ie=UTF8&orderFilter=months-6

    it is a fake.

    Clearly fake. Under “Steve Jobs’” order history, look at the three instances where it says.. ” Order # : ”

    The spacing between ‘#’ and ‘:’ is not the same as it is when I log onto my amazon (Mine’s there is NO space between them). Same thing for the spacing between “Recipient” and “:”

    Fake.

    Steve is right – and I know why.

    Look at the bottom-right corner. He blanked it out.

    He likely set this up as a fake page on his own network, and that would be Firefox’s phishing / invalid certificate warning in the bottom-right corner of the screen he blanked out.

    Different Steve here, if you login to Amazon and go to Your Account > Wheres My Stuff > Orders placed in the last 6 months you get a completely different URL.

    Oh and my last name is Jobs, want a screenshot? Yours for $50.

    Also, love the tag on the image, using a square brush in Paint or something. haha.

    It’s a fake. The “hacker” is likely a small time thief looking to profit (unsuccessfully) from authors.

    #1 – Check the following URL, which is used in the screen shot: https://www.amazon.com/gp/flex/sign-in/select.html

    This URL is used to sign-in (or re-sign in) during authentication in Amazon. The proper URL to this screenshot would be the following: https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/history/view.html

    #2 – Anyone can change their account name to Steve Jobs. Furthermore, anyone with text editor, ten spare minutes and half a brain could mock up the screen shots provided.

    #3 – Profit from such an account would be much higher through traditional black market channels.

    Finally, does anyone really think Steve Jobs actually HAS an Amazon account? He’s worth 20 Billion Dollars. I highly doubt he does any shopping online that doesn’t go through an assistant or secretary by an anonymous channel.

    @flux LOLOLOLOL

    And Leander, you get all the cool whackjobs writing you. I only get freaky stalkers.

    Listen, I agree with all of you. This guys is a whole different kind of moron. I don’t care if he’s telling the truth or not; at absolute best, the knowledge he’s gained in the field of “hacking,” has completely replaced any and all other intelligence that may or may not have ever occupied his unfortunately less-than-developed brain.

    However, to all of you obvious members of the actual Mac cult–instantly committing to memory every word the poor guy says and then internally formulating 3D images of his life around them–think for a second.

    What Steve Jobs said about Blu-Ray was in speaking from his company’s perspective. It’s irrelevant here but Blu-Ray is a world of hurt to worry about integrating into Macs, not his personal life. In fact, pretty much WHATEVER Steve Jobs says that you wrap your ears around is representative of company initiative (or lack thereof, depending on the topic). He’s secretive enough on behalf of Apple. The guy doesn’t throw out aspects of his personal life.

    Regarding that, then, do you seriously believe that a person–better yet, this person, who is infinitely integrated into the world of media and technology–who has any decent amount of money would actually deprive themselves of the world’s highest quality video format in his home? Based on principle??

    You know what, OK: if Steve Ballmer personally invented Blu-Ray technology, and refused to market it without forcing its users to install a 20-foot Las Vegas-style ‘Microsoft’ sign above their front door, then maybe our friend Steve would stick to his Apple TV and HD movies from iTunes. But be real people; of course the guy has a Blu-Ray player. More so, regardless of this loser’s “hacking” ability, he probably buys his discs straight off Amazon.com.

    Good sleuthing, gang. I’ve found, in the financial industry, frauds don’t pay attention to little details – especially on things like check fraud and money order fraud. It’s always the details (fonts, spacing, spelling) that give them away.

    I think insinuating that its a “major blow” to apple is a little- how should I say- retarded. email is available both on pc and mac and no one said macs could prevent phishing.

    All this shows is that Jobs is under educated on phishing awareness, which I suppose could in a way be applied to apple, but should bear no significant relevance to the companies integrity.

    I don’t know about your accounts, but mine greets me as “Hello, Santiago” and not “Hello, Santiago Mazziotti Irigoyen”… Why would Steve’s account greet him with “Hello, Steve Jobs” and then reference “Steve’s Amazon.com” instead of “Steve Jobs’ Amazon.com”… That is weird…

    And that’s not all folks! If you order Steve Jobs’ Amazon history in the next twenty minutes we’ll double your order, by throwing in Warren Buffett’s Amazon order history, eTrade login and the PIN to his ATM card.

    That’s a $200 billion dollar value, yours for only $19.95 plus shipping and handling.

    [...] My friend Leander has a story about a hacker claiming to have access to Steve Jobs‘ Amazon account, and his entire shopping history for 5 years—20 thousand items! Seems odd.[Cult of Mac] [...]

    I get a different result from others who are calling shennanigans when visiting Amazon. I haven’t been to the site for ages so wasn’t logged in.

    I went to Your Account, Recent Orders and was asked to login.

    After logging in I was on the View Orders screen and the URL was still “https://www.amazon.com/gp/flex/sign-in/select.html”, presumably after login the site doesn’t hard redirect to the originally request page. Only if I change the selection criteria does the URL change to https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/history/view.html.

    Also the top of the page DOES have my full name, not just my first name.

    Not saying this isn’t fake, just that the reasons people are giving for it being fake don’t appear to be right.

    @Marcin. I followed the same procedure and got the same result. The URL is the same: https://www.amazon.com/gp/flex/sign-in/select.html
    And my name is displayed at top left. here’s a screenshot: http://cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/picture-213.png

    How about the fact that anyone with the skills to pull off a successful high-profile phish like this would certainly not call a screenshot “print screens”? And why the plural if this single, dubious image is his only proof?

    I reckon it’s a fake – some kid having a bit of fun, and not at all aware how much trouble he could get into for offering to sell other people’s personal data (fake or otherwise).

    [...] Vote Exclusive: Steve Jobs’ Amazon.com Account Hacked, Hacker Claims [...]

    [...] of Mac’s Leander Kahney was approached by a hacker looking to sell access to Steve Jobs’ personal Amazon account “with all his [...]

    Uh, does no one else find it unusual that this supposedly L337 hacker had to GOOGLE amazon?

    You know who else has to do a google search to find Amazon? My 90 year old grandmother.

    If I was a celebrity and Amazon confirmed, however obliquely or redundantly, to the press that I had an account with them, I’d close it immediately.

    [...] Steve Jobs’ Amazon.com Account Hacked? 15 May 2009 No Comment My friend Leander has a story about a hacker claiming to have access to Steve Jobs‘ Amazon account, and his entire shopping history for 5 years—20 thousand items! Seems odd.[Cult of Mac] [...]

    For starters I’m pretty sure it’s fake but even if it’s not, how lame to hack the account of someone who is so ill he had to take off work.

    Also, could he PLEASE not call himself a hacker as he is insulting every hacker out there. At most he could call himself a cracker but in my opinion we are talking about a scammer.

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    [...] an Journalisten weitergeben. Jobs’ persönliche Daten hat er angeblich nicht missbraucht.Wie Cult of Mac berichtet, hat ein Hacker das Amazon-Kundenkonto von Apple-CEO Steve Jobs übernommen. Dem Bericht [...]

    take care of steve jobs

    [...] My friend Leander has a story about a hacker claiming to have access to Steve Jobs‘ Amazon account, and his entire shopping history for 5 years—20 thousand items! Seems odd.[Cult of Mac] [...]

    [...] you get too riled up — we’re going to go ahead and call “BS” on this one. According to Cult of Mac, a hacker is claiming to have successfully phished Apple CEO Steve Jobs for his personal Amazon [...]

    Does it strike anyone else as unlikely that the man who called Blue-Ray a “bag of hurt” would be ordering Blue-Ray disks on Amazon?

    [...] Fuente ¿Valorarías esta nota?  Loading … Compártelo Imprimir Tags: Curiosidad, Rumor « Ya puede escribir Email desde el iPhone mientras Caminas con Email’n’Walk Inicio [...]

    [...] hacker obtuvo los datos por medio de una mail “legitimo” que lo mandaba a un sitio falso de Amazon. [...]

    This is too funny. I changed my Amazon info to say “Steve Jobs” too. I guess I’m a hacker too! Boo yeah! Besides, if the guy was for real you would think that he would know how to spell. His poor grammar skills tells me that he is nothing but a piece of crap. He is probably some pimple-faced 14 year old in need of a good lay. This is saying a lot since I am not an Apple aficionado. I wonder if this hacker had pretended to do the same to Bill Gates.

    [...] According to Cult of Mac’s Leander Kahney, a hacker by the name of “orin0co” had phished Steve Jobs’ Amazon [...]

    [...] Exclusive: Steve Jobs’ Amazon.com Account Hacker, Hack Claims [...]

    [...] to Cult of Mac ’s Leander Kahney, a hacker by the name of “orin0co” had phished Steve Jobs’ Amazon [...]

    [...] by: Giampiero Serra In: Notizie Cult Of Mac, ha ricevuto una proposta “indecente”, da parte di un Cracker che si vanterebbe di aver [...]