One of the biggest news stories of last week was that 1 million Apple IDs had been stolen from an FBI agent’s computer. This set off a flurry of questions, like “what is the FBI doing with that many Apple IDs?” or “How did these Apple IDs get leaked in the first place?”
This week, more information has been leaked about the theft of these Apple IDs. First, the IDs were released by a group of hackers called AntiSec. AntiSec claimed to have stolen the IDs from an FBI laptop that had been hacked.
However, some suspected that AntiSec wasn’t telling the truth, and it looks like these people were right. Apparently, the unique Apple IDs were stolen from a small app development company in Florida. The developer is called Blue Toad, and they were linked to the attack by a computer researcher called David Schuetz, who details his investigation in this blog post.
The IDs were collected as part of an app that Blue Toad developed, and the IDs were then stored onto the company’s private network. Apparently, the network wasn’t too difficult for AntiSec to attack. According to AntiSec, over 12 million Apple IDs were stolen in total, although they only chose to release 1 million of these IDs onto the internet thus far.
After the IDs were stolen – but before they were leaked onto the internet – they were apparently shared with an FBI agent’s computer. This is why the theft was originally linked to the FBI computer. the FBI maintains that its computers were not hacked, and that it never possessed a file of Apple Device IDs.
In any case, if you’re an Apple user, then you should change your password as soon as possible – if you haven’t already done so.