Karachi police and Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) on Tuesday busted a gang of criminals involved in hacking into the cloud storage software of Apple iPhones, a press release said.

CPLC and Korangi Industrial Area (KIA) police acquired technical data and conducted a raid during which three people, who were allegedly involved in unblocking iCloud accounts, were arrested. The suspects were using a software they had developed to hack into the iCloud accounts, said the CPLC statement.

The suspects had purchased a domain similar to that of iPhones which they used to send unique links to phone owners to retrieve user ID and passwords, police said.

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A case had been reported in CPLC Korangi zone regarding the sale of cellphones, especially iPhones that had been snatched or stolen. It is generally believed that iPhones being expensive phones are sold in markets after opening their parts.

CPLC took notice of the matter after observing that iPhones were unlocked and sold in markets of the city. A team was formed to probe the issue after Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (Kati) chairman Zubair Chhaya discussed the situation with SSP Korangi Noman Ahmed Siddiqui.

A first information report (FIR) has been registered against the suspects at KIA police station and further investigations are being carried out.

Earlier this year, the CPLC had identified 60 “hot spots” in the sprawling metropolis where incidents of street crimes, particularly snatching of mobile phones, had increased alarmingly.

Police and CPLC had later conducted a joint raid in the electronics market situated in Saddar area and claimed to have arrested two "facilitators of street criminals".

The held shopkeepers were in contact with street criminals and used to sell snatched and stolen mobile phones in the market, police said at the time.