Apple Inc. has apologized to Chinese users who had funds stolen via hackers gaining access to their Apple IDs.

The story first emerged Oct. 11 when Ant Financial Services Group’s Alipay warned users on social media of the problem. It called Apple out, saying that it had been in contact with Apple “many times … and the issue has not been resolved.”

Tencent Holdings Ltd., the second-largest mobile payments provider in China, also confirmed that its customers also had funds stolen by hackers utilizing Apple IDs. With both companies, funds stolen from customers were as much as 2,000 yuan ($288).

It’s unusual for large tech companies — Ant Financial is an affiliate company of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., the company with the seventh-largest market capitalization worldwide and China’s most valuable — to call out Apple, itself the world’s most valuable company. The hack is said to have received wide media coverage in China including a detailed report from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

“We are deeply apologetic about the inconvenience caused to our customers by these phishing scams,” Apple said in a statement reported today by The Wall Street Journal, adding that it believed that the issue as limited to “a small number of our users’ accounts.”

According to Apple, the money was stolen when users connected their Apple accounts to Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay, with the accounts being used to make purchases on the App Store. Apple said users who had their account details stolen were not using two-factor authentication, noting that users should turn on the security feature to protect their accounts.

The form of phishing attack is still not clear nor is the exact number of users affected.

The news comes after Apple was reported to have “gone to war” against Chinese fraudsters who were making profits from buying or stealing iPhones, replacing parts and then claiming the phones were broken.

The scam apparently was at one point so widespread that Apple was forced to close some stores temporarily because of the sheer volume of fraudulent warranty claims.

Photo: N509FZ/Wikimedia Commons