So on Tuesday the hacking group AntiSec released 1 million UDID’s or Universal Device ID’s that Apple uses to identify all iPods, iPads and iPhones that they were able to download from an infected FBI laptop.
Ok so I dont want to sound like a conspiracy nut but why does a laptop that is owned by an FBI agent have over 12 million UDID’s and all of the attached personal information on it?
Why did that laptop not have an updated JAVA on it, the hackers said they accessed the the laptop via a JAVA venerability and were able to download over 12 million UDID”s.
The hackers removed all personal data before posting the 1 million UDID’s online, and that was nice of them but the bigger picture still remains. That the FBI has all of these UDID’s and now someone else has them. Why did the FBI have them on a laptop and what are the hackers going to do with them?
Now lets level set a little bit here. There is no proof that these items came from the FBI, we only have AntiSec’s word for it and they have not proven that they got them from a FBI laptop. They could have collected these from an old App or something like that, Apple no longer allows App Developers to use the UDID when building Apps, this is however a somewhat recent change.
Second we have no proof that they got anything but the UDID”s, they said they removed the personal data before posting the UDID’s online. Did they? Do they have the data that goes with the UDID?
The UDID alone, while it can be used to gather some inofrmation about the owner of the machine it is not enough to create a real problem.
IF they do have your name, address, device name and notification tokens and Apple ID that goes with your UDID, they as in AntiSec could access everything from your iTunes and Facebook accounts to your credit card information that you store on the iTunes Store not to mention the identity theft that they could pull off with all of your information.
We will keep you up to date on all of this as the story unfolds.