FOXNews reports the FBI is investigating the data breach at AT&T, which exposed more than 114,000 iPad owners" e-mail addresses. Some of the exposed e-mail addresses included government officials. The FBI stated it is assessing any “potential cyber threat” from the breach.
As previously reported on Neowin, the breach only affected iPad users who signed up for an AT&T iPad data plan. It appears an AT&T web site could be compromised that would in turn reveal an iPad owner’s e-mail address when supplied with a code associated with a particular iPad.
A hacker group calling itself Goatse Security stated it was able to obtain more than 114,000 e-mail address by guessing which iPad ID codes would be valid. This group stated it contacted AT&T, and would wait until the vulnerability was corrected before going public with this information. On Tuesday AT&T stated this vulnerability was indeed corrected.
As Apple"s relationship with AT&T becomes more stressed, AT&T apologized and said it will notify any iPad user who may have had their e-mail address exposed.
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was also among the exposed iPad users stated, "It shouldn"t be pretty hard to figure out my e-mail address, and if you send me an e-mail and I don"t want to read it, I don"t open it. To me it wasn"t that big of a deal."
AT&T declined to comment on the news that the FBI is now investigating the breach.