AT&T Web site exposes data of 114,000 iPad users

[Peaches]

June 9, 2010 5:22 PM PDT

AT&T Web site exposes data of 114,000 iPad users

by Elinor Mills

A group of hackers exploited a hole in an AT&T Web site to get e-mail addresses of about 114,000 iPad users, including what appears to be top officials in government, finance, media, technology and military.

The leak could have affected all iPad 3G subscribers in the U.S., according to Gawker, which broke the story on Wednesday. Among the iPad users who appeared to have been affected were White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Harvey Weinstein and New York Times CEO Janet Robinson.

A group that calls itself Goatse Security tricked the AT&T site into disclosing the e-mail addresses by sending HTTP (hyper text transport protocol) requests that included SIM card serial numbers for iPads, the report said. Because the serial numbers, called ICC-IDs (integrated circuit card identifiers), are generated sequentially the researchers were able to guess thousands of them and then ran a program to extract the data by going down the list.

http://news.cnet.com/security/