Apple’s Worst Security Breach:iPad Owners Exposed

Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of the wireless-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

Bloggers at Gawker have broken news that a security breach has exposed the user accounts of at least 114,000 iPad 3G customers. It’s possible, Gawker’s Ryan Tate writes, that “confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed.”

Gawker has published the list. Those on it include White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Congressional staffers,  employees at NASA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

How was the information exposed? A group called Goatse Security got the information by running a script that sucked the information out of  AT&T’s website, Tate reports.

If that’s correct that lets Apple off the hook, somewhat. It may also make AT&T — along with Gawker, which has already been banned from the latest Jobs keynote — the focus of Jobs’ ire.

Update

Apple says it fixed iPad security breach – Apple says it fixed iPad security breach AT&T Inc. said it fixed a possible security breach that may have exposed the e-mail addresses of some Apple iPad 3G owners. The telephone company corrected the potential leak Tuesday, AT&T said in an e-mailed statement. Read more here