Anonymous did not get Apple IDs from FBI, Blue Toad CEO says
(CBS News) Claims that a hacking group associated with Anonymous breached Federal Bureau of Investigation servers and obtained Apple unique device identifiers (UDID) have been disputed by the company that says it was the victim of a security breach.
NBC News reports that it was actually an Orlando, Fla. publishing company that was hacked, knocking down claims that a group calling themselves Antisec obtained data from an FBI laptop. Blue Toad chief executive officer Paul DeHart told NBC News he is certain that the files released by Antisec were actually from his company.
Blue Toad technicians downloaded and compared the files released by Antisec with its own database. The data set was a 98 percent match. According to DeHart, as soon as they were confident the data released was from the company's servers, they notified the authorities.
"As soon as we found out we were involved and victimized, we approached the appropriate law enforcement officials," DeHart told NBC News, "and we began to take steps to come forward, clear the record and take responsibility for this."
DeHart was informed by an outside researcher that the data was likely stolen "in the past two weeks."
Blue Toad is a company that creates digital edition and mobile apps to traditional publishers, which means it has access to Apple UDIDs. An Apple UDID is a string of numbers and letters that identifies individual iPhones and iPads. The numbers are used to determine which devices are approved for content, including apps in beta tests.
Antisec claimed that it hacked in to laptopbelonging to an FBI special agent and obtained over 12 million Apple device IDs. The hacking group alleged that the FBI has been using the UDIDs to track people. Both the FBI and Apple have disputed the claims.
According to the Associated Press, FBI said it never possessed the data that Antisec posted on an online bulletin board and could not verify the validity of the information.
Apple says the information posted by Antisec do not necessarily reveal vital data of Apple ID accounts.
An Apple spokeswoman told NBC News: "Developers do not have access to users' account information, passwords or credit card information, unless a user specifically elects to provide that information to the developer."
