Data Breach Exposes Email Addresses of Over 100,000 iPad Users

AT&T. still stinging from embarrassment after their poor network coverage prevented Steve Jobs from connecting to the internet with his iPad during his WWDC keynote speech, now has an even bigger PR nightmare to contend with. A group of hackers revealed that they were able to gain access to over 100,000 email addresses belonging to iPad users-and not just any users. Among those whose personal info was compromised are New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the CEO of the New York Times, and Steve Jobs himself, along with many other public figures.

The group discovered that a program on AT&T’s website would display the email addresses when given the unique identification number given to each iPad. Once they wrote a script to automate the process it took them just 6 hours to collect 114,000 email addresses. AT&T said it fixed the security hole promptly once it was informed of it.

           This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses,” a written statement by AT&T said. “The person or group who discovered this gap did not contact AT&T. We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS [iPad identification numbers] may have been obtained. “We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.”

The breach could have serious legal implications for the company, which says it will inform all the affected users.