Hacker group claims FBI had 12 million Apple IDs

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A hacker group has claimed to have obtained personal data from 12 million Apple iPhone and iPad users by breaching an FBI computer, raising concerns about government tracking.

The group called AntiSec, linked to the hacking collective known as Anonymous, posted one million Apple user identifiers claimed to be part of a larger group of 12 million, purportedly obtained from an FBI laptop.

Contacted by AFP, FBI spokesman Jenny Shearer said: "We're not commenting." But social media and news blogs were aflutter with the news. The tech blog Geekosystem called it "one of the worst privacy disasters yet" and various Twitter comments said the news suggested the FBI is tracking Apple users.

One website set up a database to help users determine if their device was on the hacked list of Apple unique device IDs (UDIDs). "Quite why the FBI was collecting the UDIDs and personal information of millions of iPhone and iPad users is not yet clear - but it's obvious that the data (and the computer it was apparently stored on) was not adequately secured," said Mr Graham Cluley of the British security firm Sophos.

Source: Straitstimes

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