If you are a Apple User, update your device’s software, lockdown the settings and make sure your password is strong.

A group of hackers, calling themselves the “Turkish Crime Family” has reportedly been trying to extort money from Apple.

 report appearing in Motherboard states that the hacking group has claimed that it has the login credentials of hundreds of millions of Apple users. It has threatened to remotely wipe out the data unless Apple pays the ransom amount of $100,000 in iTunes gift cards or $75,000 in Bitcoins.

ZDNet has today stated that it was able to verify 54 accounts whose login credentials were revealed by the Turkish Crime Family.

It is unclear as to how many accounts are held hostage by these hackers.

In its statement, Apple has made it clear that its systems haven’t been breached. The list of 54 compromised accounts appears to have been obtained from other sources.

Apple has also confirmed that it is “actively monitoring” accounts to prevent any unauthorized access and is working with law enforcement on this issue.

In its statement Apple said, “There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services.”

“We’re actively monitoring to prevent unauthorized access to user accounts and are working with law enforcement to identify the criminals involved. To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication.”

Due to shared passwords, hackers have often used login credentials obtained by their peers in other breaches, which could be the possible scenario in this case.

Now since some of the information disclosed by the hackers have been independently verified, it is a good time for Apple iCloud account users to update their devices and lockdown their security settings.

Furthermore, if you haven’t changed your password for a while, this is again a good time to do so. Change it to something unique and make it strong with numbers, capital letters and special characters.

In case you want to reset your password, here’s Apple’s password reset page https://iforgot.apple.com/