App Developer Says Stolen UDIDs Came From Them, Not FBI 180
pdabbadabba writes "A Florida iPhone and iPad app developer, Blue Toad, has come forward claiming that it is the source of the Apple UDIDs previously released by Anonymous. Their dataset, they say, is a 98% match for the one Anonymous hackers claim to have stolen from an FBI laptop. If so, this development would cast serious doubt on Anonymous' claims and, possibly, calm fears that this data is evidence of an ongoing FBI surveillance operation (a claim the FBI has also denied)."
I RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
I RTFA to see why a company would voluntarily make such a claim ( unless they are an FBI front ;) ), and it seems the company were contacted by an outside researcher who suggested they were the "leak" (and perhaps would tell the world if they did not confess?). There are no further details that seemed interesting in case you were tempted to RTFA.
But of course the whole case seems rather uninteresting to me. A list of UDIDs. Wow, if FBI has them, they might also know who owns the UDIDs and have a pretty good list of annoying consumers with which you can't have a rational discussion on the subject of electronic devices. So what?
Blue Toad is a liar? Believe the SIMPLEST answer (Score:5, Informative)
How is Blue Toad a liar?
They are admitting a serious breech which impacts goodwill at the company.
Even at the time of the UDID release, I argued that the simplest explanation was simply that the list came from some app developer that had a server collecting some data. After all, if the data came from Apple OR the FBI, it should be WAY larger and the subset we saw should be WAY more complete, the only reason why such data would be sparse is that it was collected by an app that ran on a variety of devices with a variety of information provided by the users. There was also no reason WHY the FBI would even care about a UDID for a user since Apple had discontinued use months ago and there is really no way to use that data for anything useful.
Now the Blue Toad admission verifies what was already by far the likely scenario. At this point to believe anything else is right up there at the three-tinfoil hat level.
Re:I RTFA (Score:5, Informative)