Last week, Antisec released roughly one million UDIDs (Unique Device IDs) from iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. Not only do they claim that they found these UDIDs by gaining access to the computer of an FBI agent, but they also claim to have roughly eleven million more. This raised all sorts of questions about what the FBI would be doing with these UDIDs, and people worried that Apple might be in cahoots with the US Government to spy on iOS users. Well, it turns out that we might have just had a fast one pulled on us.
NBC News is reporting that a company called Blue Toad has come forward with a less startling explanation. After comparing the released data to their own compromised data, they found a 98 percent correlation. This makes a lot of sense, and it certainly has less cringe-inducing implications. Instead of “The Man” spying on us, it seems more likely that this company was just less than responsible with the way they stored their info.
This release from the Anonymous subset was clearly engineered to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary discovered later, it looks like this supposed leak of FBI information is bogus. Clearly, we should be looking at these reports more closely, and panicking immediately probably isn’t the best solution. This is a pretty good example of Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. “Cock-up before conspiracy” is pretty damn applicable here.
Source: NBC
Image Credit: Leigh Hamilton
