iPad hacker says he’s a super-patriot

The hacker that found and disclosed the flaw that allowed personal data for iPad users to be stolen from the AT&T customer system says that he did it our of patriotic duty to the United States of America.

Escher Auernheimer, a member of the Goatse Security group, described the basic flaw and the problems it could cause. “This bug we crafted allows the viewer of a Web page to become a proxy (behind corporate and government firewalls!) for spamming, exploit payloads, password bruteforce attacks, and other undesirables. The kicker is that this attack cannot be detected by any current IDS/IPS system. We released this in March, mind you, and Apple still hasn’t got around to patching this on the iPad!” He continued by saying, “the iPad simply is not a safe platform for those that require a secure environment.”

In the aftermath of the affair,  Auernheimer says that when Apple failed to fix the vulnerability on the iPad, they opened the door to hundreds or even thousands of iPad exploits by hackers. According to a PCWorld article, his conclusion was, “the iPad simply is not a safe platform for those that require a secure environment.” The group gave as the reason for their action: “When we disclosed this, we did it as a service to our nation. We love America and the idea of the Russians or Chinese being able to subvert American infrastructure is a nightmare,. We understand that good deeds many times go punished, and AT&T is trying to crucify us over this.”

You will have to make up your own mind whether the group did what they did for altruistic reasons, or whether they had other aims when they released details of the Safari security flaw. Whether one agrees with the groups reasons or not, it is hard to argue the point that the flaw, once discovered , should have been addressed quickly. Apple’s delay on this matter  is problematic at best and less than an sound exercise of security practices in any case, at least if we understand the severity of the problem. If this is actually the case, Apple needs to do better.

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