IPad’s Security Breach Apple successfully sold its first iPad on June 4th, 2010 and within days a security breach was announced. Hackers from Goatse Security firm tracked down about a 100,000 email ids of new iPad owners which included government officials, politicians, journalists, and other important famous people (IPad Security Breach, 2010). The question now arises is that what are the reasons that forced Goatse Firm from hacking into AT&T’s website? Goatse Security officials shared the email addresses and network ID’s to Gawker Media, LLC, after they informed AT&T and the vulnerability was closed (IPad Security Breach, 2010). Some expressed little concern over the security breach stating that it was “only email addresses” and not personal or financial information. The FBI doesn’t concur. AT&T responded quickly and has worked to mitigate the damage (FBI Investigating iPad Breach, 2010).
Goatse’s Firm Objectives The following objectives might help us explain the possible factors that lead to the hacking of the AT&T’s website (Elinor, 2010).
• The Goatse Security tricked the AT&T site into disclosing the e-mail addresses by sending HTTP (Hyper text transport protocol) requests that included SIM card serial numbers for iPads. This was because it contained serial numbers called ICC-IDs (Integrated circuit card identifiers) that are generated sequentially which helped the researchers to track down 1000’s of ids.
• According to the AT&T spokesman the attack would allow the hacker to take some control of the iPad and that would potentially affect every iPad 3G subscriber (Dowell, Andrew, 2010).
• Furthermore the hacking will allow someone who has done proper research to possibly takeover their iPad and sniff traffic it which would allow them to act as iPad users themselves.
• The Hackers at Goatse claimed that the security experts frequently weigh the merits