Thousands of hacked accounts for Apple's iTunes are now for sale on China's largest retail website Taobao. For an average of $4.50 (30 Chinese yuan) users are promised downloads of songs, games, movies and other products worth at least $30 dollars on iTunes.

The Global Times reported that around 50,000 illegal iTunes accounts were being peddled on Taobao at prices ranging from one to 200 yuan. Buyers of the hacked accounts were encouraged to use them for 24 hours only - presumably before the fraud was detected and the credit cards canceled.

"If your line of work is compromising Windows PCs with password-stealing Trojans, it would not take long to harvest that many accounts that you can then sell," Internet security expert Brian Krebs told AFP.