Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

Gawker ^ | Jun 9, 2010 | Ryan Tate

[fellowgeek]

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 wireless-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

[fellowgeek]

iLeak?

[Thurston_Howell_III]

iSpy!

[LearnsFromMistakes]

ping

[a fool in paradise]

I thought iSpy was the app where school adminstrators were watching teens at home using their webscams on school equipment.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

iDepends

[Izzy Dunne]

The headline screams APPLE, the picture proclaims APPLE, but the actual fact is that it’s AT&T at fault.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

How long until the FR Apple Fanboi club gets here to blame it all on AT&T?

[jacquej]

From reading the article, it looks to me like the problem is with AT&T, not Apple.

But, nice try by the Apple haters.

[Thurston_Howell_III]

Apparently it happened while I was typing out my previous comment.

[Uncle Miltie]

This is impossible. Only Microsoft has weak security.

[jacquej]

This “fangranny” has read the actual article.

Back to the island for you!

[r9etb]

iRony

[martin_fierro]

[driftdiver]

No, iDepends are for old people.

[driftdiver]

So who selected AT&T?

[MarkeyD]

iNconceivable

[brent13a]

How long until the FR Apple Fanboi club gets here to blame it all on AT&T?

Did you actually read the article?

To make AT&T's servers respond, the security group merely had to send an iPad-style "User agent" header in their Web request. Such header identify users' browser types to websites.

So while it had everything to do with AT&T, it's servers, and it's websites, the only common factor was that iPad hardware ID's were used to obtain the info. The info came from AT&T servers....114,000 ipads weren't individually hacked.

So whether anyone is or isn't an "apple fanboi" is irrelevant, the article is titled to gain headline status and get hits to Gawker's website. In reality the breach of security had nothing to do with Apple or the iPad.

[edh]

“In reality the breach of security had nothing to do with Apple or the iPad.”

Agreed. Does this mean that Apple fanboys can now stop trashing some of the more horrible 3rd party software that screws up windows? I understand this was a multicast to all iPads and was a total “3rd party” screw up, but this happens to me all of the time with Windows.

Maybe Apple could just create its own 4G network :-) ... I’m not joking there either :-)! They have the cash and the name to roll out a nice WiMax network across the USA ... they could even partner with their old buddies at Motorola :-)! It’d be a win/win ... Apple could have its own wireless nationwide network under their own control.

[Ancient Drive]

iLeak?

[Thurston_Howell_III]

Is that whats goign on? Its crazy that this can be seen from so deep within Steve-o’s colon.