U.S. prosecutors today announced charges against two men – one from Fayetteville – accused of stealing and distributing e-mail addresses of over 100,000 iPad owners in June.
The incident gained attention after a group calling itself Goatse Security revealed to Gawker that it had hacked into iPad subscriber data exposing sensitive information about politicians, CEOs, celebrities and government officials who used AT&T’s 3G wireless service.
Daniel Spitler, 26, of San Francisco, and Andrew Auernheimer, 25, of Fayetteville, have each been arrested and charged with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud.
According to Washington County arrest reports, Auernheimer was booked at 9:16 a.m. Tuesday.
The FBI is expected to hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon to discuss the charges.
They are not criminals. They took that information to the public, and those that were exposed to the flaw. ATT should be thanking them. They are obviously good guys, the gov instead needs to hire them.
Jude is right. These guys are white hat hackers and they did AT&T a major favor by going to the company FIRST. This is like suing someone for closing your car door for you if you left it open in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Did anyone else notice that his address is listed as “HOMELESS”?
Trust me, their court case will be a joke and they both will be offered great jobs shorty following this mess.
Just another reason to leave AT&T for Verizon
Goaste Security…lol. I advise everyone to avoid googling that term.
AT&T is a major beneficiary of the nice little law name PATRIOT act, these guys exposed some security theater, thus they must be disappeared.
Go to work, get in line, STFU, everything is fine.
Even before the patriot act was dreamed up what these two did was illegal…
And call it white hat all you want, hacking into and stealing data from a company is illegal not some Robin Hood type scenario. If all they were interested in was to show a security flaw, they could have done so without the data theft.
This story is just weird. Homeless guy from Fayetteville brings down Apple security. Arrested while appearing in court for unrelated drug charges.
From what I gather they only came clean when the story got out. They had been documented previously discussing the benefits of mining emails….which is just sleazy in my opinion. Robin Hood? I think not. More like a couple of misguided goofballs with too much time on their hands.
@Actually – If you leave your car door open and someone reaches in and steals your Lady Gaga CD before closing it, is it not a crime?
@George – Let’s expand the analogy even further. If you left your car door open and the person who found it your cell phone number, this is like suing that person for taking the keys, closing the door, and calling you to arrange a pickup and explain the importance of closing the and locking the doors.
Motives and outcomes, as aggravating or mitigating circumstances, may determine whether charges are pressed, and may affect a verdict or sentence. The law does not distinguish between altruistic crime and opportunistic crime.
These guys are criminals. Here is a link to wired with much more to the story. They weren’t looking to be Robin Hood, they were out to make money in the long and short run from their hack.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/att-hack/
You guys can pat these dudes on the back if you want, but you should know who you’re supporting: http://www.fastcompany.com/1660623/crib-sheet-andrew-auernheimer-atts-ipad-hacker
My favorites are the anit-Semitic rants and the quote that all bloggers are a “bunch of retards” and that “we need to put these people in the oven.” What a humanitarian!