Just yesterday it was reported that hundreds if not thousands of iTunes accounts were hacked and used by a Vietnamese iPhone app developer (now banned from App Store for violating Terms) “Thuat Nguyen” to make purchases of his 42 pirated Vietnamese books apps in the Books category of App Store. Today Apple responded to a query regarding the exact number of iTunes accounts hacked. It turns out that only 400 account were compromised. But is it really so?

There are way too many unanswered questions regarding the official figure of number of accounts hacked from Apple. If you do some simple math:

Total iTunes accounts worldwide: 150 million = 150,00,0000

iTunes accounts hacked according to Apple: 400

Percentage of accounts hacked: 400/150million = Less then  0.0003%

Assumption: Each hacked account purchased 100 apps (this is highly unlikely but let’s take this figure for the sake of estimation)

Total app purchases from 400 hacked iTunes accounts: 400 X 100 = 40,000

Now if we divide this total figure evenly among the 42 apps from this developer, the figure comes out to be 952 downloads per app.

Now the big question is that how on Earth can 952 downloads bring an app that was just released a day before into the top 50 paid app list? And also, how can only 400 iTunes users out of the total of 150 million bring a big sum of 42 apps into the Top paid apps list?

Apple has said that the iTunes servers were not compromised in this whole gamble and has put the complete blame on iTunes users by saying that it was the result of phishing and/or weak passwords.

Here’s the Facebook profile of Thuat Nguyen:

Update: The Facebook profile screenshot posted above was a mistake. This is not the Facebook profile of the hacker Thuat Nguyen. I personally apologize for posting the wrong screenshot.