One million Apple UDIDs (Universal Device IDs) were released into the public domain today, along with Notification Center tokens, device names and device IDs. While none of the data is personal information, it can potentially be tied back to device owners, names and addresses.
According to Antisec, the group that released the data, those one million UDIDs are part of over 12 million they obtained from an FBI-owned laptop that was compromised in March 2012. The total dump reportedly also contains names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and other information about the device owners.
Unfortunately, if you own an Apple device, there’s nothing you can really do at this point. You can’t just change your UDID the way you can change a password. There are a sites that let you search the dump of UDIDs to see if yours is in the list, but the safest method is to download the 90MB text file from the links provided at Pastebin and check for your UDID with a simple Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac). Also, if your device isn’t in the list, be mindful that it could be one of the other 11 million.
To find your phone’s UDID:
- Plug your device into your computer.
- Launch iTunes and select your device in the sidebar.
- Where you see your device’s name, capacity, software version and serial number, click on the serial number. This will toggle the display of your device’s UDID.
It’s unclear what (if anything) Apple will say or do about the leak, or what a malicious party could do with the information, but for now it’s a good reminder to keep your computers secure and malware-free.
Hackers Dump 1 Million Apple UDIDs Found on FBI Laptop [The Mactivist]
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