Apple says it did not provide data to FBI

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Apple on Wednesday responded to a weird story earlier this week that UDID information was stolen by hackers from an FBI computer. Apple contacted The Loop with some additional information.

“The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization,” said Apple spokesperson, Natalie Kerris. “Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID.”

Hacker group Antisec released 1 million unique identifiers, but in a statement released on Tuesday the FBI said “there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised.”



  • Canucker

    Weird how this story has picked up more garbage that a toffee apple dropped on a rug. Also, good reason to upgrade to iOS6 (as if I needed one).

    • chjode

      That was an awesomely vivid metaphor. Toffee apple– I love it!

  • Mother Hydra

    I’m more inclined to take Apple’s statement at face value than our oh-so-beloved FBI. I’m sure this data was obtained the old-fashioned, warrant-less way.

  • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

    Apple sure did respond swiftly. That’s different. They are usually pretty quiet about things and how often do they contact media?

    Interesting.

  • Dr.No

    Apple can easily say where the data came from because it not only contains UUIDs as well as PushNotification tokens which are unique to developer using them. It can say which app from there we can find out how FBI got it. Everything else is obsification. Apple should know better than try this bull shit. Where is Jim’s OP-ED on this.

  • http://ComicsPundit.com/ Shawn L.

    First of all, do we know that these UUID’s are legit?

    Are we taking the hackers’ word on this? Or has a sampling of UUID’s been matched to verify that they refer to real user devices in the wild?

    Gruber has a post stating that a few UUID’s that are associated with devices named “John Gruber’s iPad” are not his. Could this be one big fiction concocted by the hackers? Or is the FBI data a false “honeypot” used as bait for hackers?

    My first instinct is to wonder why the FBI has such data, but as can be seen by the questions I ask above, I’m willing to entertain the possibility that there’s less than meets the eye here.

    • lucascott

      Not really. We don’t know that they have 12 million. Or that all 1 million of what they released is real. We have no proof there was any other data, we have no proof that really is Obamas iPad etc

      They could have made an app, gotten like 100k numbers and are phishing with those ‘check’ sites for more