Two dudes seeking "maximum lols" charged in AT&T iPad hack case

Two suspects are charged with federal crimes for hacking AT&Ts website in 2010 to obtain personal data of more than 100,000 iPad users. From Kim Zetter's Wired News piece:

Daniel Spitler, 26, of San Francisco, Calif., was charged in New Jersey on Tuesday with one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. Andrew Auernheimer, 25, of Fayetteville, Ark., was charged in Arkansas for the same crimes.

The chat transcripts really do say it all:

Spitler: I hit fucking oil

Auernheimer: loooool nice

Spitler: If I can get a couple thousand out of this set where can we drop this for max lols?

Auernheimer: dunno i would collect as much data as possible the minute its dropped, itll be fixed BUT valleywag i have all the gawker media people on my facecrook friends after goin to a gawker party

Two Charged in AT&T Hack of IPad Customer Data (Wired News)

• [Anonymous]

  So your intent matters. All you need to get arrested here was a number generator (e.g. 1..100000000) and something that gets webpages.

  #!/bin/bash
  for number in `seq 1 100000000`
  do
  wget ….$number
  done

  Boom, you’re a hacker. Now fill in the blanks for intent and you are under arrest!

  Here’s my question, why isn’t anyone complaining about AT&T being irresponsible with their personal information? These guys are not very technical yet they get thrown under the train.

• [Anonymous]

  From http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/ipadhackcomplaint.pdf

  The phrase “D8″ means to be deeply involved in an activity or to perform an activity to the fullest extent possible.

  I didn’t realize that emoticon meant that.

  http://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=D8&defid=166045

  Maybe those who write such documents could use Google first?

• [jphilby]

  @Anon #14: Exactly.

• [Anonymous]

  You betrayed the lols!

• [Anonymous]

  Weev lives in Arkansas? Hah.

• [Anonymous]

  Some kids ‘won’ by getting AT&T to take their customers’ security seriously.
  Oh but that was embarrassing to AT&T so they need to go to jail, AT&T need to enforce that because they care about their customers so much – despite this clear evidence that they don’t.

• [omnifrog]

  I think the best quote on this subject was from the ABC news article:

  http://j.mp/exLND8

  “ABC News contacted the Goatse site, and did not get a response.”

  What exactly was the response ABC News was looking for?

• [Anonymous]

  I’m pretty sure they achieved maximum lols

• [a_user]

  I think the issue is more they didn’t contact AT&T before contacting the media making them look bad, combined with the two guys trying to figure an angle.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Their parents must be so proud.

• [iratecat]

  Off topic, but…

  Is that an actual ipad running OS X?

  • [Niklas]

    Most likely connected to a Mac with a VNC client.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    http://boingboing.net/2010/04/03/behold-osx-on-ipad-w.html

• [semiotix]

  Idiots! First of all, it’s “lulz.” Not “LOLs” or “lols.” Get it right, jerks. You do it for the lulz.

  Also… I’m sure the rest of what they did was bad, too.

• [Jack]

  I love the way that they did this to hook up with Gawker Media “facecrook” friends to go to a Gawker party.

  LAMEZ 2 TEH MAXXX!

• [Stooge]

  I assume it’s a VNC client.

• [Clayton]

  I can’t believe I am doing this, but…

  Both of these guys are OG trolls and were hanging around the likes of 4chan for half a decade before people like Xeni caught on and coopted and copied and pasted their memes all over your mom and dad’s internet. In other words, it’s not unreasonable to guess they were in on the conversations where “for the lulz” was coined.

  Was I just trolled?

  • [semiotix]

    No, I’m not trolling you. I don’t care if they invented the emoticon–there have to be rules, dammit! Carelessness with l33t-speak, lolspeak, and twitterese is what gave us abominations like “ROFLCOPTER” and “laughter OL.”

    Wait, if I was trolling you, that would be good for some lulz. Okay, I was trolling you. LOL I TROL U!

    • [Clayton]

      Lol. I kinda like “Laughter OL”

      I am more lenient, though. I think early adopters and inventors of such things (as well as anyone else, really) should be able to do whatever they darn well please with the l33t.

    • [Forkboy]

      My ROFLCOPTER goes SOI SOI SOI

• [Willie McBride]

  The usual Apple double standard. If they had discovered a vulnerability like this one in any other vendor’s product or service nothing would’ve happened and nobody would’ve thought to prosecute them, but if you tangentially involve Apple, you’re done and the Apple shills will bay for your blood.

  • [Avram / Moderator]

    Now wait just a minute there, Willie McBride,
    You know well as I do, there’s laws nation-wide
    Against swiping data with these kinds of hacks;
    It’s not something special for iPads and Macs.
    Whether pros, or just script-kids, for LOLs or for gain,
    The fellows who practice such legerdemain
    Get found and arrested again and again,
    And again and again and again and again.

    • [Felton / Moderator]

      Hahaha! Thanks for the LOLs, Avram.

    • [imag]

      In my sleepy morning haze, I thought Antinous wrote that and was stunned :)

      Nice work, BTW. We need more rhymes around here…

  • [Anonymous]

    It wasn’t Apples bad, it was AT&T’s bad. For the record.

  • [Anonymous]

    Except this time it’s AT&T, not Apple.

• [bersl2]

  FREE WEEV

• [double_tilly]

  “The breach … exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance,politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s information was compromised.”

  LOL