A publishing company by the name of “BlueToad” has come forward as the source of the leak of millions of UDIDs for Apple’s iOS devices. While it was initially published that the data came from an FBI laptop, the bureau quickly denied the report.
Paul DeHart, CEO of the Blue Toad publishing company, told NBC News that technicians at his firm downloaded the data released by Anonymous and compared it to the company’s own database. The analysis found a 98 percent correlation between the two datasets. ”That’s 100 percent confidence level, it’s our data,” DeHart said. “As soon as we found out we were involved and victimized, we approached the appropriate law enforcement officials, and we began to take steps to come forward, clear the record and take responsibility for this.”
The company, who mainly builds applications for App Store developers, says that UDIDs were stolen from its servers two weeks ago. The company says that the leaked UDID data matches its stolen data at a level of 98%.
Apple commented on the matter to NBC: “As an app developer, BlueToad would have access to a user’s device information such as UDID, device name and type,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Mullter told NBC News on Monday. “Developers do not have access to users’ account information, passwords or credit card information, unless a user specifically elects to provide that information to the developer.”
BlueToad said that it would leave it up to the developers it works with to contact affected customers.
The company has posted a mea culpa on its website.