Goatse Takes AT&T And iPADs By The Goat, Says The Hack Was Ethical.

Goatse Security has conveyed over the phone to Computerworld that it's hacking of AT&T and harvensting as many as 114,000 email addresses as ethical.

"It was in the public interest to have this disclosed, If someone had a Safari exploit for the iPad, for example, they could have gotten this information. It was in the public's and AT&T customers' interest [for the latter] to be able to mitigate this instantly." Said Goatse member Escher Auernheimer in a telephone interview

AT&T was informed before the disclosure and by the time it was publicized, AT&T had plugged the hole. They informed a third party to let AT&T know of the security hole. Goatse did not contact AT&T directly because they did not want AT&T to stop them;

"We didn't want an injunction [from AT&T] that would have kept us from disclosing the data. And we didn't see the necessity of contacting AT&T directly."

In any case iPad users should be happy because, it could have been different if someone else took their emails.

gawker via Computerworld