He-Said, She-Said ⇥ allthingsd.com
Yesterday, hackers claimed to have stolen over twelve million iOS device UDIDs from an FBI employee’s laptop. But now, the FBI claims that it didn’t have any such file:
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the FBI said, “The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”
Apple gave a statement to AllThingsD stating that they had never provided this information to the FBI, either:
“The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told AllThingsD.
In an oddly-similar vein, a hacker claims to have stolen copies of Mitt Romney’s historical tax records from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Franklin, Tennessee office:
Interestingly, the “hacker” described an everyday breaking and entering situation, whereby a human being gained physical access to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers’ office in Tennessee on August 25th, and copied the files to a flash drive. The statement also claimed that encrypted copies had been mailed to PWC, as well as to the Democratic and Republican Party offices in Williamson County. The GOP office confirmed to VentureBeat that a flash drive had been received and that the Secret Service had confiscated it and is examining it currently.
But PWC issued a statement to the Wall Street Journal:
A PwC spokesman said in a statement: “We’re aware of the allegations that have been made about improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time, there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”