FBI Probes AT&T Network’s IPad E-Mail Security Breach (Update2)
(Updates share prices in penultimate paragraph.)
By Karen Gullo and Greg Bensinger
June 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation started an investigation of a security breach in AT&T Inc.’s wireless network that exposed the e-mail addresses of users of Apple Inc.’s iPad 3G.
“The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address the potential cyber threat,” FBI spokeswoman Lindsay Godwin said in an e-mail. She said in an interview no other details were available.
A group called Goatse Security said it obtained the e-mail addresses through a program on AT&T’s website, according to Gawker Media’s Valleywag website, to whom the group released addresses of iPad users, including New York Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The addresses were released on condition that the website not publish them, Goatse Security analyst Escher Auernheimer said in a phone interview.
“We’ve acted completely in good faith,” Auernheimer said. He said no one at the Internet security firm had been contacted by the FBI. “We’ve taken absolute steps to ensure that no one was affected by the data we had,” Auernheimer said.
Gawker Media was contacted yesterday by FBI officials and asked to keep documents related to the iPad security breach posting, Editor-in-Chief Remy Stern said in an interview. He said he didn’t know the nature of the investigation.
AT&T, the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone provider, corrected the flaw, the company said June 9 in an e-mailed statement. Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, said today there was no additional information to provide.
114,000 Addresses
Valleywag said on its website on June 9 that about 114,000 e-mail addresses of iPad users, including members of the U.S. military and executives at media, technology and finance companies, were compromised.
Apple has sold more than 2 million iPads since releasing the device in April. Some models of the iPad tablet work with AT&T’s third-generation wireless network, and other versions only work on Wi-Fi networks. Apple doesn’t say how many of each model it has sold.
A computer crime task force in a suburb of San Francisco is investigating how an unreleased prototype of Apple’s iPhone was obtained by technology blog Gizmodo, also owned by New York- based Gawker Media. Gizmodo said it purchased the phone for $5,000 after it was found in a bar in Redwood City, California. An Apple engineer left the device in the bar, said Gizmodo, which returned the phone to the company. Apple reported the device as stolen in April.
Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
AT&T declined 15 cents to $25.29 at 4:01 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have lost 9.8 percent this year. Apple added $3 to $253.51 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock has climbed 20 percent this year.
--With assistance from Peter Burrows in New York. Editors: Peter Blumberg, Michael Hytha.
To contact the reporters on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net; Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.
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.