Well this is awkward… Antisec didn’t hack an FBI laptop: it seems the US government agency in fact had nothing to do with it. It appears that our friendly neighbourhood hacktivists lied when they claimed responsibility for hacking an FBI agent’s laptop to extract a file with millions of personal details about Apple users.
What had actually happened was that app publisher Blue Toad’s database was hacked and files were copied.
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The company describes itself as “a digital publishing company providing digital editions and apps to publishers worldwide. We utilize page flip technology to convert a PDF into an online viewable format.”
Blue Toad’s CEO, Paul DeHart, explained what had happened in a recent blog post, saying that the company was a recent victim of a “cyber attack” which led to the files being copied from its database. According to DeHart, the Apple unique device IDs (UDIDs) which Antisec put online matched those in a database that the company has collected from its customers. So not FBI tracking then?
The way the hacker group described it, it had gone through months of careful planning and gained access to an FBI laptop where it found proof that the government was tracking people and wanted to expose them. A claim which the FBI said was “totally false” in a tweet last week.
Statement soon on reports that one of our laptops with personal info was hacked. We never had info in question. Bottom Line: TOTALLY FALSE
— FBI PressOffice (@FBIPressOffice) September 4, 2012
“That’s 100 percent confidence level, it’s our data,” DeHart told NBC. “As soon as we found out we were involved and victimized, we approached the appropriate law enforcement officials, and we began to take steps to come forward, clear the record and take responsibility for this.”
