On Sunday, Apple confirmed its developer portal was hacked and that some information from its developer database may have been stolen. In a statement sent out to developers, Apple said it detected an intrusion last week and shut down the site immediately.
Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.
In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.
According to The Guardian, Turkish security researcher Ibrahim Balic claims he is the person who compromised Apple’s developer database. He says he wanted to show that the system was vulnerable to an attack that would leak user information. He posted a video on YouTube documenting the hack and reportedly informed Apple of the security flaws he used to gain access to this developer information. Balic claims Apple shut down the developer portal soon after he sent in his report. He has not heard back from Apple after he allegedly informed the company of his intrusion.
[Via Apple and The Guardian]