New York
– Valleywag blog publisher Gawker Media says that the FBI has contacted it with
questions regarding its publishing of details of a security hole in AT&T’s
website that exposed the email addresses of some 114,000 Apple iPad owners. "It’s
very early in the investigation," FBI spokeswoman Katherine Schweit told
The Wall Street Journal.
Escher Auernheimer, a member of Goatse Security — the
computer security group that discovered the security hole — told The Journal
that it had not been contacted by law enforcement, and maintains the group did
nothing illegal.
The group said in a blog post that while it did not itself
notify AT&T of the security hole, it "made sure that someone else tipped
them off," adding that the security hole was plugged before the exploit
was publicized.
Gawker maintains that it was not paid or otherwise compensated
for the exposed data it received from Goatse, redacted details of which it
published online this week.
Related Links:
http://gawker.com/5560542/fbi-investigating-ipad-breach
http://security.goatse.fr/blog/?p=5
http://snipurl.com/xbdru
(WSJ)
http://snipurl.com/xbedn
(DMW previous coverage)
