App Publisher Takes Blame for Massive Apple ID Hack

A small Florida publishing company has stepped up to take the blame for last week’s release of 1 million Apple iOS Unique Device IDs by the hacker group AntiSec.
AntiSec had claimed it compromised a total of 12 million UDIDs, and that the information came from an FBI staffer’s laptop.
A UDID is a sequence of 40 letters and numbers specific to Apple devices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. A UDID alone doesn’t contain a wealth of information, but could be combined with such information as billing addresses and payment data to pose a risk to users. AntiSec’s claim had stoked fears that the FBI was using UDIDs to eavesdrop and glean personal information from Americans who own Apple devices. The FBI denied it ever had the data, and Apple said it had never given the information to the FBI.
Blue Toad publishing company CEO Paul DeHart on Monday morning told NBC News that the information had come from his company. Blue Toad analysts downloaded the released UDID data and found a 98% correlation between it and the company’s own information.
“That’s 100 percent confidence level, it’s our data,” DeHart told NBC. “As soon as we found out we were involved and victimized, we approached the appropriate law enforcement officials, and we began to take steps to come forward, clear the record and take responsibility for this.”
But DeHart did allow for the possibility that the compromised data could have been obtained by other sources, potentially including the FBI, after being hacked from his company’s servers.


Read: Mashable