Hackers Leak 12 Million Apple IDs Online; FBI Denies

A group of hackers has released a set of ID numbers of 1m Apple devices & claimed to have obtained 12m Apple device IDs by hacking an FBI agent's laptop.

A group of hackers has released a set of identification numbers of one million Apple devices and claimed to have obtained 12 million Apple device IDs by hacking into the laptop of an FBI agent.

In a message posted on Pastebin.com, hacker group AntiSec said it obtained a file with “a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices, including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of devices, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zip codes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc”.

UDID is a sequence of 40 letters and numbers specific to Apple devices, that establish a unique identity in Apple’s app system.

Security experts said the leak of UDID on their own poses little danger to the device owners.

The hackers claimed they obtained the file by hacking into the laptop of FBI agent Christopher K. Stangl, a member of the FBI’s Cyber Action Team.

The FBI told the Los Angeles Times that it was aware of the alleged hack but denied that it ever had that information. But officials there said they could not verify the validity of the data that AntiSec released. Apple made no comment on the issue.

Some experts doubted the hackers’ claim of breaching the FBI, saying there are many ways that the file could have been obtained.

Graham Cluley, a researcher with security firm Sophos, said in a blog post that the person who wrote the Pastebin message may be a German speaker because of some German phrases used in the post.

Source: IANS