A little while ago, YouTube was hacked and exploited on a large scale. Unfortunately, YouTube is not the only major service to fall prey to hackers. Two iPhone application developers have uncovered what appears to be a widespread hacking of the iTunes App Store.

Patrick Thomson, the developer of the QuickReader iPhone application, was the first to notice that something was amiss, when his app was displaced in the rankings by numerous suspicious looking Vietnamese manga apps.

It appears that someone going by the name Thuat Nguyen managed to hack into people’s accounts and buy his own apps to push them up the app store rankings. The scale of the attack, as well as the methodology used isn’t known. However, the number of people who have been compromised is definitely significant. This particular thread on MacRumors forum paints a worrisome picture. Several users have been charged hundreds of dollars for purchases they never made. To make matters worse, Apple’s customer care isn’t being very helpful either.

If you have associated a credit/debit card with your iTunes account, you should immediately check your recent purchase history and remove your card from your iTunes profile.

Image Courtesy: Alex Brie