Apple Ping!
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Posted on 06/09/2010 4:02:59 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of the cellular-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.
The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised.
(Excerpt) Read more at gawker.com ...
Hmm. An article from Gawker, the parent company of Gizmodo, who ‘bought’ the stolen iPhone 4 prototype. Wonder if they might just have an axe to grind since Apple shut Gizmodo out of WWDC?... You boil this article down and the reality is AT&T screwed up security on its servers.
There are now almost 100 million devices connected at least some of the time to the Internet running one version or another of Mac OS. This includes tens of millions of Macs as well as iPhones, iPod Touches and the new iPads. Few if any of them ever employ security software beyond that built into the Unix-based Mac OS. Nevertheless, it's virtually unheard of for malware to be effective in the wild and there have been essentially no viruses propagated from Mac to Mac. This the polar opposite of the Windows world which to us seems to be a virus and malware nightmare.
Beyond that, it's just a personal preference issue.
The only thing that happened here was Apple was requiring an email address for activation. Other than that, the fault lies with AT&T. Nothing in Apple’s software shipped with the device had anything to do with a security link. AT&T is at fault here.
Gawker is owned by Gizmodo, and Gizmodo has an axe to grind by running a misleading article.
I kinda figure that.. I was thinking about getting AT&T as my main cell phone provider, but now I’m leaning towards Verizon.
“seems”
Just that, seems. Those of us in the security world know better.
I did read the article, which is why I believed that ATT was more to blame for this than Apple, yet Apple was the focus of the headline.
Just because Apple only uses ATT(which I believe is idiotic in itself), doesn’t mean a security screw up on ATT’s network is Apple’s fault.
Because it was... "Goatse Security".
For those of you already familiar with the infamous "goatse", yes, that's not a joke, it's absolutely serious. It's a security firm. Their logo is a hoot.
That's a BUSINESS issue, not a technical issue. The technical responsibility lies with AT&T, specifically with whatever fool blew it on the website.
And it has EXACTLY NOTHING to do with Apple's products, their merits or shortcomings. It was a stupid mistake on a vendor's website.
Even the most love-struck Apple fanboy would not claim that everything associated with an Apple product -- including their vendors' websites -- was unhackable.
So I find it quite dismaying, how many FReepers are so blinded by their hatred of all things Apple, that they conflate Apple's business responsibility for the website breach, with the technical robustness of their products (that robustness is what lends OS-X its reputation for difficulty of hacking).
That's so sad. FReepers ought to be smarter than that.
Well, come on...that’s because there are consequences...
If there were no consequences, we would all be able to eat giant banana splits each night...:)
Regardless of the hows or whys, the fact is that security precautions are not nearly an onerous on both of those platforms.
Everyone talks about the reasons, and it may not be fair that all the hackers seem to attack Windows for whatever reasons, but it is what it is. Windows servers and PC’s are the ones that get focused attacks, so they are the ones you gotta put the electronic chastity belt on.
You and I both know that any computer hooked up to a network and not maintained by someone who is highly knowledgeable and proficient at what they do, can be rendered useless by someone who knows what they are doing regardless of the platform.
The hard truth...
How about AT&T?
I’m leaning to Verizon, however, AT&T is still in my range..
That!
It’s a breach of AT+T’s systems on the backend, not the iPad itself.
It’s more evidence that AT+T is fundamentally unable to run a modern cell network.
I must have Verizon in order to use an iPhone since AT&T is trash in my urbanized area.
That is why I going to Verizon...
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Love the security firm’s tagline.
Gee, as a Windows fan, and user, for years I’ve been hearing for a long time how secure Apple is and how insecure Windows is. What happened, Apple?
Ummmm..., why is Apple getting blamed for something that AT&T did? ... LOL ... In other words, it looks like AT&T has the problem, not Apple ... :-)
KD, who has said Apple is hack proof?
In this case, someone actually better be asking -- "Who said AT&T was hack-proof?" ... LOL ...
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