A glitch in AT&T's Web site has exposed the e-mail addresses of more than 100,000 iPad buyers.
People who read this also read:
The data was downloaded by a hacking group known as Goatse Security, which obtained the information after stumbling upon a program on AT&T's Web site that would send back the iPad user's e-mail address when given a unique SIM card identification number known as an ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card Identifier).
By guessing ICC-ID numbers, the hackers were able to download 114,000 e-mail addresses, according to the Web site Gawker, which first reported the news on Wednesday.
"AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC-IDs," AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said in an e-mail message on Wednesday. "This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses."
AT&T said the only information hackers could have obtained as a result of this bug was the e-mail address attached to the iPad. That data could have been misused by spammers.
AT&T plans to inform customers whose e-mail addresses were obtained, Siegel said. "At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared."
There are some pretty powerful iPad users out there, apparently.
After examining the hackers' data, Gawker found e-mail addresses belonging to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer, as well as addresses belonging to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the U.S. military.
"The person or group who discovered this gap did not contact AT&T," Siegel said.
Neither Apple nor Goatse Security responded to requests for comment.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has launched a probe into a security breach that allowed hackers to retrieve 114,000  addresses of  users on the  network.

The FBI announced the investigation Friday, which will determine exactly what allowed a group of hackers using the name "Goatse Security" to access the data. The security breach was first announced by the   on Wednesday. The FBI has since asked Gawker Media LLC, the owners of the site, to retain all information relating to the incident. The company was also involved in another recent case with Apple Inc., which included the . Gawker said that it does not believe it is the main target of this FBI investigation.

Editors at Gawker were able to verify the information the hackers sent to them, and did not post full e-mail addresses or any other identifying information in its initial story of the incident. Gawker said that it did not pay Goatse Security for the data. One of the hackers later wrote that they did not reveal the addresses to anyone else and had already deleted them.

The hackers were able to obtain the data after discovering a program on AT&T's website that provides the e-mail address of a user when that user's identification number is given. The hackers essentially guessed and then saved the numbers for the 114,000 users. They did not tell AT&T of the security hole.

A spokesperson for AT&T said Wednesday that the company "was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC-IDs the identification numbers", and had disabled the e-mail-providing program by Tuesday. AT&T also said that no other information was stolen other than the e-mails addresses of their customers, and that "there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared." The company says it will notify all of the iPad users whose information was compromised.

Many of the users involved are high-ranking government or corporate officials, including , the current , and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City. Others include employees of Google and the .

Apple has not commented about the breach.