MicroPower Systems

Even the largest companies, where you would expect the highest security, can be caught by surprise. That’s what happened to Apple last week when their App Store showed 42 out of the 50 top “Books” all coming from the same unknown developer. Even worse, some customers of the Store reported unknown credit card charges in the hundreds of dollars. Overall, around 400 customers were affected.On Tuesday, Apple announced that they had removed the developer, Thuat Nguyen, along with all of his apps from the store. The given reason was violating the Program License Agreement, especially regarding fraudulent purchase patterns. Researchers and developers were not surprised that Apple was a target, given its size and customer base, but it’s still an unexpected failure of what many considered one of the top security systems.In fact, there have been previous complaints that Apple has kept such close control over its store to prevent other developers from selling there, and not to ensure security. Obviously, this has not hindered Apple’s popularity, with more than 225,000 apps in the store and more than 100 million accounts on the site, and most of them are linked to credit cards.One issue that Apple is promoting now is password security, which is important in all online purchases. Obviously, easier passwords increase the possibility of getting hacked. Luckily, other consumers avoided the fraudulent apps since most of the book titles were in Vietnamese. The most serious damage was to the customer base, according to Michael Gartenberg of the Altimeter Group.However, no actual customer information was compromised, according to Apple. Credit card numbers are stored on iTunes’s main servers, where developers do not have access.