Hackers Release 1 Million Apple Device IDs Allegedly Stolen From FBI Laptop
Found on Wired on Tuesday, 04 September 2012
In a lengthy post online, the hackers wrote that last March, they hacked a laptop belonging to an FBI agent named Christopher K. Stangl from the bureau’s Regional Cyber Action Team and the New York FBI office’s Evidence Response Team.
The file, according to the hackers, contained a list of more than 12 million Apple iOS devices, including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, names of devices, types of devices, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, ZIP codes, cellphone numbers, and addresses.
Apple has been criticized for hard-coding the ID’s in devices, since they can be misused by application developers and others to identify a user, when combined with other information, and track them.
Of course the FBI has already stated that there is no evidence about the hack although others have already found their UDID's on the leaked list. That leaves three possible explanations: the hack is a fake and everybody collaborates to discredit the FBI. The hack happened, but the FBI just cannot figure out how. The hack happened, but it's a weather balloon. It will also be very interesting to know why the FBI is in possession of this data anyway. Either they stole if from Apple, or Apple handed it over to the FBI.