AT&T on Wednesday confirmed that a massive data breach exposed iPad customers' e-mail addresses after reports about the breach surfaced on Gawker.com. AT&T confirmed the security lapse to the Wall Street Journal and to Gawker.com.
The breach reportedly affected 114,000 iPad 3G customers. Gawker.com reported that the list of those affected include prominent U.S. politicians, military officials and corporate CEOs.
AT&T said it closed the security gap on Tuesday.
"At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared," AT&T said in a statement to the Journal. "We take customer privacy very seriously, and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted."
According to Gawker.com, a security group known as Goatse Security obtained the subscriber data.
In a statement to Gawker.com, AT&T said it learned of the breach on Monday.
"AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC IDS," AT&T told Gawker.com. "The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device. This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses. The person or group who discovered this gap did not contact AT&T.
"We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained," the AT&T statement continued. "We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted."