Nefarious hacker group AntiSec says it has boosted over 12 million Apple UDIDs from an FBI agent's laptop.
The group claims it hacked into the laptop of an FBI "cyber security expert" and lifted a list of "12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc."
To prove that their claims are legit, the hackers have released 1,000,001 UDIDs, with the personal data stripped.
The hackers say they boosted the information from a file called "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv," a name that probably refers to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance. The NCFTA functions as a "conduit between private industry and law enforcement with a core mission to identify, mitigate and neutralize cyber crime." In this case, it doesn't seem like it worked very well.
The FBI denies the IDs came from its agent, issuing a statement saying:
“The F.B.I. is aware of published reports alleging that an F.B.I. laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an F.B.I. laptop was compromised or that the F.B.I. either sought or obtained this data.”
As for how much you should panic, probably not much. According to security experts, the information is mostly just strings of numbers that would only be useful if correlated with other information.
“This poses very little risk. None of this information could be used to hack someone or launch an attack,"Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7 to The New York Times.
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