iTunes Gift Cards Cracked by Chinese Hackers: $200 gift cards for $2.60

China is arguably the most difficult market in the world to sell legitimate digital music downloads.  This is largely due to Baidu’s free mp3 search that dominates the market and generates huge profits for the Chinese search engine.  However, there is one group of people who are making a decent living off digital downloads by hacking Apple’s iTunes gift vouchers.

Ulysses Shi from music industry consultancy Outdustry writes that on Taobao, China’s biggest C2C online shopping site, $200 iTunes gift cards are on sale for 17.9 RMB, roughly $2.60.  Gift card codes are created by hackers using key-generators and transferred via Taobao’s Instant Messenger chat system.  While the price was 320 RMB six months ago, the competition has intensified with thousands of gift cards now available, pushing the price down to 18 RMB per card.

Outdustry:  The Chinese iTunes Gift Voucher Trick