Here’s something that will not make Apple users freak. I’ll let the Toronto Star tell you the details:
Internet activists claim to have hacked more than 12 million identification codes for Apple devices from an FBI agent’s laptop and have posted instructions on online bulletin board Pastebin on how to access one million of the user IDs.
Known as the Anti Security Movement, or Antisec, the group said on a Twitter account belonging to the Anonymous “hacktivist” collective that many of the IDs come complete with the device owner’s personal information.
In a blog post Tuesday that included attacks on security agencies, Antisec said it withheld information such as names, phone numbers and addresses, but left enough for “users to search for their devices.”
The group did not indicate that bank account numbers or passwords were included.
“During the second week of March 2012 a Dell Vostro notebook used by supervisor special agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java,” Antisec said in the post.
“Some files were downloaded from his desktop folder; one of them with the name of NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv turned out to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including unique device identifiers (UDIDs), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple push notification service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.”
Antisec said it published the alphanumeric IDs to call attention to the possibility that the FBI had used or was planning to use the information to track citizens.
The FBI was quick to deny this. Here’s what the CBC said:
“The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
“At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”
So the question is, whom do you believe? It really doesn’t matter as even if this is half true, it’s something to be concerned about. If you want to see if you’re on the list, you may want to start here for what the group posted. Advance warning, it’s not for the average person. Hopefully someone will take this data and come up with an easy way to search it.
UPDATE: My wish has been granted. Here’s an easy way to see if you’ve been affected.
Snapchat Responds To Hack & Fails To Make Anyone Feel Better
Posted in Commentary with tags hack, Snapchat on January 3, 2014 by itnerdIt took them a couple of days, but Snapchat has finally responded to the hack that resulted in the user info and phone numbers of 4.7 users being exposed. They posted a entry on their blog late yesterday that among other things had this to say:
A security group first published a report about potential Find Friends abuse in August 2013. Shortly thereafter, we implemented practices like rate limiting aimed at addressing these concerns. On Christmas Eve, that same group publicly documented our API, making it easier for individuals to abuse our service and violate our Terms of Use.
We acknowledged in a blog post last Friday that it was possible for an attacker to use the functionality of Find Friends to upload a large number of random phone numbers and match them with Snapchat usernames. On New Years Eve, an attacker released a database of partially redacted phone numbers and usernames. No other information, including Snaps, was leaked or accessed in these attacks.
We will be releasing an updated version of the Snapchat application that will allow Snapchatters to opt out of appearing in Find Friends after they have verified their phone number. We’re also improving rate limiting and other restrictions to address future attempts to abuse our service.
And to deal with the perception that Snapchat didn’t take what the security researchers said seriously, there’s this:
We want to make sure that security experts can get ahold of us when they discover new ways to abuse our service so that we can respond quickly to address those concerns. The best way to let us know about security vulnerabilities is by emailing us: security@snapchat.com.
However if you read through this post, the company never actually says the word sorry. They just say that there was a problem, they’re going to fix it, and if you find something here’s how you contact them. There’s nothing here that should make users feel any safer about using Snapchat. That is a #fail as user information and phone numbers were exposed. Sure the phone numbers were partially redacted. But I bet that if someone tries hard enough, they can make use of that info for evil purposes. Thus the company needs to step up and own that. Snapchat also needs to give their users the feeling that they take their privacy seriously and show some remorse over this hack.
We’ll see if Snapchat actually does that, or do they duck, cover, and hope this blows over.
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