Apple server gets hacked by group that steals ID information

BY DOAK JANTZEN

Apple is the latest company to come under cyber attack - by the same hackers blamed for infiltrating Sony's Playstation Network.

"Not being so serious, but well...Apple could be target, too," the notorious hacker group Anonymous tweeted Sunday with a link to a list of 27 usernames and passwords supposedly lifted from an Apple server.

The server is used by Apple to store technical support surveys. Anonymous published the list on the text-sharing site Pastebin as a part of their Anti-Security, or "AntiSec" campaign, according to Reuters.

Lance Ulanoff, editor in chief of PCmag.com, said that though this particular attack on Apple was not very extensive, it is "indicative of an alarming trend" in hacking.

"Everyone's vulnerable," Ulanoff said. "Wherever Anonymous wants to go it can."

Ulanoff compared the hackers to "malicious children; very smart, malicious children," capable of disrupting large corporations to affect change.

In April, an Anonymous attack on Sony's Playstation Network was launched in defiance of Sony's attempts to stop users from jail-breaking their PS3 game consoles, forcing the electronics giant to close the network for a month.

AntiSec involves members of both Anonymous and Lulz Security, the group responsible for hacking the PBS website with a report that rapper Tupac Shakur was "alive and well" in New Zealand, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

LulzSec is famous for repeatedly hacking Sony websites as well as websites for the Central Intelligence Agency and a British police unit.

Security experts say the group emerged from Anonymous.

In a separate incident, a group called Script Kiddies hacked Fox News' Twitter account Monday night and falsely reported that President Obama had been assassinated. Script Kiddies also originated within the Anonymous group.