The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States has launched a probe into an incident that led to the exposure of personal information of AT&T Inc. customers. Among the affected customers were White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the mayor or New York City Michael Bloomberg.
A group calling itself Goatse Security was able to get information on over 100,000 AT&T iPad subscribers by exploiting a major bug on a script at an AT&T website. The group simply needed to insert an ICC-ID as part of a HTTP request to the vulnerable script which then returned the e-mail address associated with the specific iPad device.
AT&T has stressed that only e-mail address data was actually retrieved by the group and nothing more sensitive was at risk. Still, a collection of 114,000 active e-mail addresses has value by itself without even including the personal e-mail addresses of celebrities or government officials that were revealed.
“The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address the potential cyber threat,” FBI spokesman Jason Pack said. Apple’s iPad, which launched in April this year, has already sold over 2 million units.
Security experts, for the most part, maintain that the hype surrounding this hack has more to do with the fact that it involves an Apple device and some well-known names than with iPad or even AT&T security. “The hype around Apple products — like the new iPhone and iPad — is amazing. However, the reality is this type of vulnerability isn’t really news and happens all day long,” George Kurtz, chief technology officer for security software company McAfee, said.
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Result for: apple products
According to new research from firm DFC Intelligence, games for the iPhone/iPod Touch will take a large 25 percent of the portable gaming market in 5 years as the Nintendo and Sony handhelds have nearly reached full saturation point.
Overall, the firm believes the total market will grow to about $11.7 billion in sales by 2014.
“The dedicated portable game systems from companies like Nintendo and Sony are still expected to lead the market, but it appears growth for these devices has peaked,” says analyst David Cole, via GI.biz. “The platforms from Apple are expected to be responsible for the bulk of market growth over the next few years.”
8000 people were surveyed in the US and the EU, and about 60 percent responded that they had played games on their mobile phones in the last year with 40 percent of those saying they had paid for an application. The Apple App Store was the number one service named for purchases.
About 30 percent owned a DS/DSi while 15 percent owned one of the two Apple products.
“With the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple has finally delivered mobile developers a platform with an attractive business model and a rapidly growing installed base of active consumers,” added Michel Kripalani, president of Oceanhouse Media.
Result for: apple products
According to the Nikkei business daily, Sony is actively considering developing a ‘PSP phone,’ a mobile phone/gaming handheld hybrid, in an effort to compete with the astoundingly popular iPhone.
The company has plans to get a project team together in July to develop the new product, which will “combine functions of its portable game player (the PSP) and Sony Ericsson’s mobile phones,” reads the report.
Although Sony declined to comment on the speculation, the move would make sense and has been oft rumored for years.
Game developers such as Capcom have been offering games for the iPhone, taking advantage of the strong market share for Apple products while at the same time taking away revenue from the traditional handheld gaming devices, the PSP and Nintendo’s DS/DSi.
