Something is going on with Apple services – services are down – and they may be (have been) under attack, because visiting the system status page brings up some interesting news:
Customers may be unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, or Mac App Store.
As in all Apple services with (links to) credit card information went off-line. It may be that hackers are exploiting a recently disclosed security issue. This can’t be a coincidence. Smells like rotten apples to me.