In a major blow to the iPhone app scene, a site made home by some of the most prolific iPhone app crackers/suppliers has stopped its operations. iTunes Card VN (iPhone Vietnam Groups) turned out dozens of brand new releases every day.
The site was run by a very well known iPhone app cracker called ‘kidmoneys’ and it’s believed the message currently on the site’s homepage is his;
I won’t crack apps/games anymore
People who used the Installous application from Hackulo.us will be familiar with Appulo.us. Functioning a little like a torrent index, Appulo.us carries links to cracked iPhone applications hosted elsewhere, without carrying any of its own content. It’s believed that kidmoneys and other crackers from iTunes Card VN supplied around 60% of everything added to Appulo.us each day.
TorrentFreak spoke with most_uniQue, a cracker from Hackulo.us who explained the significance of the closure. “iTunes Card cracked about $1000-1500 worth of apps each week,” he told us. “About 50 apps a day.”
Of course, all these apps have to be purchased from the Apple App Store before they can be cracked and distributed, but we were told that some crackers use cracked iTunes gift card codes to make their purchases from Apple.
A physical card isn’t needed, the code from a card is enough and these are generated by crackers with the use of keygen-like software. most_uniQue told TorrentFreak that a $1000 worth of credit can be purchased for $50 and a quick search turned up offers even lower than that.
Since all requests for Apple apps were fulfilled on the iTunes Card site (kidmoneys had 23K+ ‘thanks’ from users), the speculation is that they used cracked iTunes gift cards to fund the purchase of the apps. TorrentFreak was told that many of the most expensive apps did in fact originate from the iTunes Card website.
Although it seems to be the end of the road for iTunes Card VN, some of the residents have already moved on to a new home ready to crack another day. Indeed, a brief look at Appulo.us today shows plenty of new apps.
