Most hackers would also recognize that demanding ransom from Apple in exchange for not wiping accounts isn't likely to be very effective and may have some negative consequences (e.g. being caught and getting beaten half to death by their victims). I have no trouble believing that the culprits here are likely to be pretty young.
The threat of wiping accounts was silly in the first place. The hackers have user passwords, not access to Apple infrastructure. So they log in as the users, delete files from iCloud... and Apple restores files from yesterday's backup. They could cause a lot of hassle for the users and Apple customer support, but not wipe accounts.
Most hackers don't commit crimes, because most of them aren't stupid. But some are. (I have known those stupid people, and they were in their 30s, did really stupid shit, and are now doing time)
I would posit that most people engaged in cyber crime are not hackers, from the botnet owners who literally paid for and downloaded a tool with instructions, to the people who install skimmers, to carding merchants, people running protection rackets, email scammers, etc. A small number of people actually "hack" into a system using any form of advanced skill in order to do things like extract accounts like those in the article.
What definition of hacker are you using here? I know we're on Hacker News, but in the cybersecurity context hacker refers to someone who hacks into a system, which would mean hackers commit crimes by definition.
No, in a cybersecurity context a hacker is merely someone who knows about or is involved in security hacking. This includes, for example, researchers and government employees. It also means people who self identify as a hacker, and again, they usually don't commit crimes. The vast majority of DefCon attendees, for example, don't commit crimes, and then there's all the corporate shills at BlackHat.
