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Apple: Developer Site Targeted In Security Attack, Still Down

Posted by samzenpus on from the protect-ya-neck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has informed developers that an intruder gained access to its developer site database. Quoted email from Apple: 'Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers' names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then. In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we're completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.'"

7 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting timing... by dottrap · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Interesting timing. Wonder if it was related/coordinated to the Ubuntu forums attacks.
    http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/21/0318243/ubuntuforumsorg-hacked

    1. Re:Interesting timing... by scdeimos · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I was thinking the same thing. Yesterday Ubuntu, today Apple, tomorrow Microsoft?

    2. Re:Interesting timing... by ClaraBow · · Score: 4, Funny

      The Windows team must be doing early research for Windows 10 ;-)

  2. Ohne Steve geht alles schief! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This wouldn't have happened if Steve was still alive

  3. CNet reading comprehension by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Either these guys at CNet can't read, or they make it up as they go. CNet writes in its article "Apple says its developer site was targeted in an attack, and that any information that was taken was encrypted. ".

    No, that's not what Apple says. Apple didn't say any data was taken, encrypted or not. Apple said the data that was targetted (not the same as "taken") was "securely encrypted".

  4. Re:The summary is wrong again... by Maestro485 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually the source of information was an email that Apple sent out earlier today regarding the situation. I have an iOS developer license so I got the email.

    Here's a pastebin dump: http://pastebin.com/4dCWge1s

  5. The data was taken and was partially unencrypted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have my own domain name, and suffice it to say it is unique. It is 8 characters and unless the attackers brute-forced my name and the domain name, data was definitely taken unencrypted. I have not published anything to the app store yet; my website doesn't talk about any apps. As far as anyone who develops for iPhones knows, my personal development account doesn't exist.

    Throughout the day Thursday I had 4 password reset attempts on this Apple ID. I immediately changed my password the legit way to something much stronger than I had it, but that's beside the point - there's really only two vectors for someone to have gotten my developer account info: through the Apple breach, through email harvesters, or through past business contacts (I have developed for other people, but not published under myself)

    Considering the timing, I think we can assume it was obtained through the Apple breach. I consider the data compromised. I'm going to go so far as re-generate ALL of my provisioning, etc. certificates and I advise anyone else to do so when the site comes back up.