A SURVEYING WEBSITE run by Apple has become the latest victim of a notorious internet hacking group.

The loosely-aligned Anonymous collective claimed it had breached some data from the abs.apple.com website, which handles traffic for Apple’s customer service surveys. That website has since gone offline.

Anonymous tweeted its claim, including a link to a file on the text-sharing website Pastebin where it had deposited 27 usernames and alleged passwords attached to them.

The usernames are not linked to any Apple ID accounts of the company’s users or iTunes account holders.

Anonymous supplemented the details by saying that while it had proven Apple had security vulnerabilities of its own, it would not be an ongoing target.

Anonymous had been previously part of an ongoing show-of-strength contest with the rival group Lulz Security (or ‘LulzSec’), but the two groups became allies late last month when the latter group ‘retired’ and publicly backed the former.

To mark their allegiance, Anonymous described the Apple attack as being part of its ‘AntiSec’ campaign.

Anonymous, which has also been known for its offline opposition to Scientology, has previously attacked the websites of companies which had withdrawn their support for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.  have included PayPal, Visa and Mastercard.

LulsSec included Sony, Nintendo, the CIA, the US Senate and Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency among its own victims.

Read: Hacker group LulzSec calls it a day – but why? >