It turns out the source of the 1 million leaked Apple UDIDs were from a small publishing company in Florida by the name of Blue Toad. Remember, in the original leaked story, the hacker group Anonymous claimed the UDIDs were stolen from a FBI employee’s laptop, which the government agency quickly denied.
Paul DeHart, CEO of Blue Toad publishing company, told NBC News that it had used a unique technology to determine that the leak was from its database. The company compared the leaked Anonymous database with its own database and found a 98 percent correlation between the two datasets. DeHart didn’t explain the ins and outs of how this was determined, but said forensic analysis by his company showed the data a had been stolen within the past two weeks.
The CEO of Blue Toad seemed baffled of what had transpired saying, “I had no idea the impact this would ultimately cause.” He added “We’re pretty apologetic to the people who relied on us to keep this information secure.”
With all that being said, we must keep in mind the leaked UDIDs from what we know aren’t as harmful as it seems. UDID (Unique Device Identifier) is just a serial number you’ll find brandished on Apple iPads, iPods and iPhones. And like we’ve said before, as far as we know it doesn’t offer personal information about the user. These serial numbers are usually obtained by app developers who want to keep track of its users for common things such as app usage, social media usage or location.
Does this latest security leak make you feel unsafe about your personal information getting out?
[via NBC]