A UDID is the Unique Device Identifier for iOS devices. It's essentially the serial number of every iPhone, iPod, and iPad, says Gizmodo.
"While it's still plenty disconcerting that 'user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.' are out there," according to Gizmodo, "there's nothing in it (specifically, email addresses and passwords) that could upend your digital life."
The hakcer group, which calls itself "AntiSec," is reportedly connected with Anonymous, wihch is known for hacktivism. AntiSec's claim that it hacked the UDID data from an FBI agent's laptop computer has raised questions across the Web about why the FBI possessed a list of 12 million UDIDs and associated personal data.
"We decided we'd help out Internet security by auditing FBI first," AntiSec says in a
posting reportedly released Sunday on
PasteBin.com announcing the breach.
AntiSec's posting gives instructions on how to download the 1,000,0001 user IDs. The posting also says names, cell phone numbers, addresses and other associated data in the file were "trimmed."
In addition, the posting claims, the group obtained the Applie IDs by hacking into a computer owned by a an FBI agent in New York assigned to investigate cybercrime. The FBI has issued a statement denying the data was hacked from one of its agent's computers.
While it is indeed certain that AntiSec has published one million UDIDs, there is no definitive way of verifiying its claims to have 11 million more UDIDs and the additional personal information -- names, cell numbers, etc -- connected to the UDIDs.
Changing your password to your Apple ID is a good idea if your UDID is on the list of one million published UDIDs. If you use the same password on other websites, change passwords on those accounts as well.
AntiSec, which seems to have a sense of humor, strangely demanded that a reporter for Gawker post a
picture of himself wearing a tutu and a sneaker on his head before they would give any press interviews about the Apple attack.
A new era of Internet security has begun. If hacks like these can sucessfully get personal data on millions, expect security to tighten up on everything you do on the Web over the next couple of years.
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