A hacker has admitted to breaching the security of AT&Ts servers and stealing personal info from a large number of iPad customers. Reuters reports that Daniel Spitler, a 26 year old San Francisco resident, pleaded guilty to two charges on Thursday in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey. Spitler admitted to helping to create what is called a "account slurper" program that was used to attack AT&Ts servers in June 2010. The attack took the email addresses from over 114,000 iPad users over the AT&T network. The story says that some of the possible people affected by the hack include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. After the hack attack occured, Apple shut down the iPad feature that let the hackers obtain the email addresses. The info was later leaked to the web site Gawker who published a article detailing some of the data obtained in the attack.
Spitler also admitted in court on Thursday to being a member of the well known hacker group Goatse Security. He is also accused of working with another hacker, Andrew Auernheimer, on the AT&T iPad cyber attack. Auernheimer's case is still pending. In the meantime Spitler is awaiting to be sentenced by the judge presiding over the case on September 28. While he was previously facing a maximum of 10 years in prison, Spitler's guilty plea means that his sentence could be reduced to "just" a 12 to 18 month term in prison. He is currently out on bail.
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