Posted at: 01/18/2011 9:07 PM
They say they were trying to draw attention to a potential security threat on ATT’s website.
But two men accused of using the website to get the email addresses of some 120 thousand i-Pad owners are now facing federal prosecution. F.B.I. agents took Andrew Auernheimer and Daniel Spitler into custody Tuesday morning.
They’re charged with conspiring to hack A-T-and-T’s server and possessing personal information illegally obtained from the website. The case against them stems from something that happened seven months ago. Just one month after the latest i-Pad went on sale — A-T-and-T announced it had fixed a security gap that inadvertently exposed i-Pad owners’ email addresses.
A hacker group known as “Goatse Security” claimed on a blog that it had used the vulnerability to harvest that information. The list of people affected ranged from media bigwigs to military officials and included Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Auernheimer and Spitler say they never made a dime off their hack; that they were only trying to draw attention to the security gap.
They say it took them a little more than an hour to get the information.
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Article source: http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s1931188.shtml?cat=565
Category: Vulnerabilities/Exploits