Security Breach Exposes 114,000 iPad Owners

An AT&T security breach has exposed the email addresses of thousands of elite iPad customers including the White House Chief of Staff.

According to ValleyWag, the breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised.


The subscriber data was obtained by a group called Goatse Security. They obtained the data through a script on AT&T's website which returned an email address when provided with an ICC-ID as part of an HTTP request. By looking at known iPad 3G ICC IDs the group was able to guess a large number of ids.

AT&T was notified of the breach and the security hole was closed.