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App Developer Says Stolen UDIDs Came From Them, Not FBI
pdabbadabba writes "A Florida iPhone and iPad app developer, Blue Toad, has come forward claiming that it is the source of the Apple UDIDs previously released by Anonymous. Their dataset, they say, is a 98% match for the one Anonymous hackers claim to have stolen from an FBI laptop. If so, this development would cast serious doubt on Anonymous' claims and, possibly, calm fears that this data is evidence of an ongoing FBI surveillance operation (a claim the FBI has also denied)."
This just shows that you cannot trust anonymous. but then again.. WOOHOO, EA SPORTS!!
Which side to believe when both sides are known liars?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
was given the data by an insider or hacked it themself first.
The next question: What was Blue Toad up to? Why did the FBI have a copy of their data? How many FBI back doors are their in Blue Toads apps?
Lets run those apps under traffic analysis. The version that was live a week ago.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
4 comments and no one has yet claimed that Blue Toad is an obvious FBI front?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
the fbi check cleared... i did it
If the FBI was caught doing something illicit or illegal, wouldn't you expect them to come up with an alternate source of the data to cover up their behavior?
As phrased by an article at ZDNet, it's any company that allows this result:
So there are two things we know: Apple and the FBI are back on the Christmas card lists of the general public, and hackers apparently lie.
Apple and the FBI are good, and hackers are bad. Apparently that's the lesson to take away from this.
According to their article in Wikipedia, it's also a company that lists the Department Of State and the Public Relations Society of America among their customers.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I RTFA to see why a company would voluntarily make such a claim ( unless they are an FBI front ;) ), and it seems the company were contacted by an outside researcher who suggested they were the "leak" (and perhaps would tell the world if they did not confess?). There are no further details that seemed interesting in case you were tempted to RTFA.
But of course the whole case seems rather uninteresting to me. A list of UDIDs. Wow, if FBI has them, they might also know who owns the UDIDs and have a pretty good list of annoying consumers with which you can't have a rational discussion on the subject of electronic devices. So what?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
How is Blue Toad a liar?
They are admitting a serious breech which impacts goodwill at the company.
Even at the time of the UDID release, I argued that the simplest explanation was simply that the list came from some app developer that had a server collecting some data. After all, if the data came from Apple OR the FBI, it should be WAY larger and the subset we saw should be WAY more complete, the only reason why such data would be sparse is that it was collected by an app that ran on a variety of devices with a variety of information provided by the users. There was also no reason WHY the FBI would even care about a UDID for a user since Apple had discontinued use months ago and there is really no way to use that data for anything useful.
Now the Blue Toad admission verifies what was already by far the likely scenario. At this point to believe anything else is right up there at the three-tinfoil hat level.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
According to their article in Wikipedia, it's also a company that lists the Department Of State and the Public Relations Society of America among their customers.
As soon as I saw that, my thought was "so that's where the kid thought he was".
I figure a script kiddie broke into the Blue Toad servers, found some documents talking about working with the government (perhaps the FBI in particular), then found the UDIDs, and jumped to the conclusion that they had broken into an FBI system involved in domestic surveillance. Then they release it as Anonymous in an act of misguided privacy activism, throwing in an agent's name (possibly even mentioned in the found files) for credibility.
I'm jumping to conclusions myself, though, and assuming that there's some shred of truth to anybody's statements.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
And the UUIDs might not have been used by the FBI, but that doesn't mean they aren't engaged in a massive surveillance operation against its citizens.
If you think that way about the FBI, then you know the list was not from the FBI.
With a few hundred million iOS devices in the wild, an FBI list should have hundreds of millions of entries. AND it would be a hell of a lot more complete.
It was always bullshit to think this list was from the FBI. It was painfully obvious the list was published by a group that hates the FBI as much as you and other Slashdot users do, just to discredit them.
I don't care about the FBI myself one way or the other. But I do care about groups that are supposed to represent a kind of healthy counterpoint to the FBI, losing a lot of credibility by making stuff up just to attack enemies.
You want a real conspiracy theory? How about the FBI was behind the original Anonymous post unveiling the UDID list, knowing the real holder would come forth and embarrass Anonymous... Anon, seems you have a mole.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The original claim that the list came from the FBI is an amazing act of trolling. There are way too many people who not only believe that the instant they hear it, but will never let it drop, regardless of how much other evidence or pieces of the story come out.
About as wrong as is humanly possible. Certain sub-organizations that claim to be offshoots of Anonymous such as Lulzsec may have a top down leadership structure, but Anonymous as a whole is much more of an idea than an organization.
...and it could just as easily be a case where the FBI requested this list from Blue Toad, or Blue Toad submitted this list as part of an investigation. All we know now is where the data likely originated -- which is precisely where everyone assumed it originated anyway (a single developer list).
It could also be that the developer got hacked w/o being involved with the FBI in any way, prior to the attack.
Which, on the whole, is a lot simpler explanation than a conspiracy theory.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
A very useful definition of religion is "the lack of falsifiability". If there is no evidence which would convince you that the FBI isn't a bad actor in this case then your claims are not falsifiable. Therefore, your belief that that "the evil government is out to get you" is a religion. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point most of Slashdot was swallowed up by this same "Church of the Tin Foil hat". It used to be funny, then it got scary, now it is just boring.
Since this is your religion, there is nothing I can do to talk you out of it, but what the hell, I'll give it a shot:
The government is not picking through your smartphone or tracking your location or reading your text messages. Of course they could, and would, but they aren't. Why? Because you don't matter.
2% different is alot of differences when your looking at a million entries. Of course the theives could of added bogus data to the list in order to hide its origens. Or appened one data set with another in order have over a million records.
Perhaps their database has changed since it was hacked?
Ah, yes. The colloquializtion of Occam's Razor is "All things being equal, the simpler theory is more likely."
However, this neglects the little-known fact that William of Ockham was one of the founding members of the real Illuminati (and not the 18th-Century cover organization everyone knows about). He planted his philosophical disinformation into the intellectual culture specifically to cover the elaborate and long-running schemes he knew his secret society would enact over the coming centuries. By making us think that the simpler solution is the better one, he innoculated us against uncovering complex and insidious schemes, or believing them if they are uncovered. Fnord.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Ah, yes. The colloquializtion of Occam's Razor is "All things being equal, the simpler theory is more likely."
The internetization of Occam's Razor is "If something could have happened by any wild stretch of the imagination, that's how it happened."
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The next question should be, "Why did Blue Toad have 11 miilion UDIDs from Apple and where did they get it from?"
Because Blue Toad like many other Apple App developers used to have their iOS app send their servers the UUID and some personal information. It became against the rules some time ago, but this list dates from when it was still a common practice.
The UUIDs and the info did not come from Apple.
Several people pointed this out in the original story comments, but looney-tunes conspiracy nuts chose not to believe it.