Man involved in AT&T iPad vulnerability discovery arrested

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Police in the US have arrested a member of the team that found a vulnerability affecting various iPad users on the AT&T network.

Andrew Auernheimer, a key member of Goatse Security that recently claimed to have found a security hole on the AT&T website containing iPad user information, was detained in Arkansas but for drug charges rather than anything iPad related, CNET has reported.

Auernheimer has previously been arrested for alledgedly providing a fake name to police officers responding to a parking complaint, Lieutenant Mike Perryman, of the Fayetteville Police Department, told CNET.

However, the authorities did not confirm why a warrant had been drawn up prior to the arrest, or whether it had anything to do with the authority’s work on the AT&T case.

Earlier this month, Goatse Security said it had taken information about the vulnerability on the website to Gawker, an online gossip site. Goatse claimed to have accessed AT&T's iPad subscriber information containing around 114,000 email addresses, including those of high up politicians and business executives.

AT&T confirmed that it had closed the security hole and that it was only email addresses that had been accessed.

Mark Siegel, executive director of media relations at AT&T, told IT PRO: “The hackers did not inform us in advance about what they claimed to uncover.”

Goatse claimed in a blog post that it had waited until the hole was fixed by AT&T before taking information to Gawker.

“We did not contact AT&T directly, but we made sure that someone else tipped them off and waited for them to patch until we gave anything to Gawker,” Goatse added.

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