There are some
AT&T customers out there who may be wondering when the apologizing will stop and true action to fix problems will start. According to a recent PC World
report, the company is trying to make amends with more than 100,000 Apple (
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Alert) iPad 3G owners over a breach of security.
A hacker has reportedly gained access to e-mail addresses on the iPad devices. The apology was offered on Sunday; the invasion of privacy occurred six days earlier. Dorothy Attwood, senior vice president for public policy and chief privacy office reported the company learned of the breach on June 7.
The breach occurred when hackers “maliciously exploited” a function in its system to gain access to serial numbers of AT&T (
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Alert) SIM cards for the iPad 3G and their corresponding e-mail addresses. This breach did not just occur on the standard consumer, however, as some of those hit included high ranking individuals from the Senate, the Department of Justice, FCC, NASA, Google (
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Alert), Amazon, Microsoft and others.
Attwood has assured the public and AT&T customers that no other information was exposed and that the matter has been completely resolved. She promises the hole which allowed the breach was plugged within hours and that email addresses and serial numbers of SIM cards were the only information gathered from that portal.
Interestingly, it was not necessarily hackers who discovered the AT&T hole, but Goatse Security, a computer experts group that has taken offense to the name. They also are not fans of their activities being referred to as malicious. The group wrote on its blog that AT&T is being dishonest about the potential harm the security hole exposed.
The security company is crying foul, claiming AT&T is going after them over the issue instead of taking blame for the oversight, especially since Goatse revealed its findings to the media. Goatse claimed it disclosed information only to a single journalist and destroyed the data afterward. The activity has captured the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation which has opened an investigation into the breach and Goatse’s activities.
Last week, AT&T
reported its plans to offer two mobile data plans for new iPad buyers. DataPlus will provide 200 MB of data for $15 per month (additional 200 MB chunks of data also cost $15), and DataPro, which provides 2 GBytes of data for $25 per month, with every additional GByte costing $10.
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