The FBI has responded to AntiSec’s claim that it breached the laptop of a special agent and obtained a database of more than 12m Apple unique device identifiers (UDIDs) and other personal user data, deeming it to be “totally false”.
The response follows yesterday’s publication of 1,000,001 of these UDIDs on Pastebin.com by AntiSec, a hacking group associated with Anonymous and LulzSec. According to AntiSec’s Twitter account, the site received 370,000 hits and the leak became the most-visited post on the site in less than 24 hours.
FBI’s denial
The official statement from the FBI says, “At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.” However, AntiSec has hit back, saying that “no evidence” doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
The group has also warned the bureau that it has a further 3TB of data saying, “We have not even started.”
Publicity stunt
Either way, AntiSec has achieved its aim of receiving as much publicity about the leak – or alleged leak – as possible. In the original announcement, it was said that the group would give no interviews on the matter “till Adrian Chen get featured in the front page of Gawker, a whole day, with a huge picture of him dressing a ballet tutu and shoe on the head” (sic).
Chen, a writer for Gawker who has covered much of the news surrounding Anonymous, duly complied and AntiSec has said they will be in touch with him soon.
A common culprit
Following the leak, many owners of Apple devices have sought to find out if theirs is listed among the 1m UDIDs leaked. Meanwhile, AntiSec has implied that this information may have been acquired via a common app installed on all of these devices.
UPDATE: Apple has now weighed in on the issue saying that the FBI did not request nor did it receive the UDID information from them. A spokesperson has also said that Apple is now planning to ban the use of UDIDs.
UPDATE: It has since come to light that the leaked data came from BlueToad, a digital publishing company.
