FBI Investigating iPad Security Breach
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}During his keynote speech, Steve Jobs shows off the iPad at its January debut. (FoxNews)
NEW YORK -- The FBI said Thursday that it is investigating a data breach at AT&T that exposed the e-mail addresses of more than 114,000 owners of the Apple iPad, including government officials.
The agency said it is looking into "the potential cyber threat" from the breach.
AT&T Inc. said it has no comment. The Dallas-based phone company acknowledged Wednesday that it had exposed the e-mail addresses through a Web site, and had closed the breach.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The vulnerability only affected iPad users who signed up for AT&T's "3G" wireless Internet service.
An AT&T Web site could be tricked into revealing an iPad owner's e-mail address when supplied with a code associated with their particular iPad. A hacker group that calls itself Goatse Security said it got the site to cough up more than 114,000 e-mail addresses by guessing which codes would be valid.
The group said it contacted AT&T and waited until the vulnerability was fixed before going public with the information. AT&T said the problem was fixed Tuesday but that it was alerted to it by a business customer.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Apple Inc., the maker of the iPad, has not commented on the breach, referring all questions to AT&T.
AT&T has apologized and said it will notify all iPad users whose e-mail addresses may have been accessed. It noted that the only information hackers would have been able to steal using the attack were users' e-mail addresses. But that can be enough to launch an effective attack, since the attacker also knows that the person receiving the e-mail is an iPad user and an AT&T customer and would expect to receive e-mail from Apple and AT&T about their accounts. Criminals could use that knowledge to trick them into opening e-mails that plant malicious software on their computers.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's e-mail address was among those exposed, but the billionaire media mogul shrugged it off Thursday and said he didn't understand the fuss.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"It shouldn't be pretty hard to figure out my e-mail address," Bloomberg said, "and if you send me an e-mail and I don't want to read it, I don't open it. To me it wasn't that big of a deal."