E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

It seems both Apple and the FBI were telling the truth: the Apple UDIDs published last week didn’t come from either organization, with an American e-publisher posting a statement that the data was stolen from its systems.

The five-year-old BlueToad, based in Orlando, Florida, says the UDIDs that were posted to Pastebin matched its databases. In this statement, the company apologizes to its customers (complete with the usual bromide about “understanding the importance of protecting the safety and security of information contained on our systems”).

The company’s CEO Paul DeHart told NBC News the file posted by the crackers had a “98 percent” match with the company’s database (suggesting that the entries that didn’t match were added to the database before it was posted).

“That’s 100 percent confidence level, it’s our data,” he says in the NBC News interview, adding that the attack that obtained the data occurred within the last two weeks.

BlueToad now says it’s co-operating with law enforcement in the investigation, and that it apologises to its “partners, clients, publishers, employees and users of our apps”.

The publisher says it has discontinued the collection and reporting of UDIDs. ®