Notorious Goatse Hacker Pleads Guilty To Massive iPad Security Breach

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Remember the hacker who exposed over 114,000 AT&T iPad customers’ personal data in last year’s widely publicized security breach? He just pled guilty.

Daniel Spitler — a 26-year-old hacker who was part of the Goatse Security hacking group that exploited a hole in AT&T’s website to steal over a hundred thousand iPad 3G owners’ email addresses — admitted his guilt in the fraud and hacking charges facing him in a New Jersey court today. The plea will bring him down to a 12 to 18 month maximum sentence.

Spitler’s guilt has never been in question, only his motivations. Goatse Security claimed that they tried to alert AT&T directly about the vulnerability, only to be ignored, forcing their hand. However, private chat logs have suggested that this was just standard anarchy raze-and-burn behavior, with Spitler’s hacking partner Andrew Auernheimer saying that he had “not really” alerted AT&T tech support, and that he “hoped” that AT&T would sue him.

They’ve done a lot more than that. Aurenheimer is currently trying to strike a deal with prosecutors, but he’ll still likely face a much stiffer sentence than Spitler: when Aurenheimer’s home was searched by the FBI in relation to the hacking charges, they found cocaine, LSD and ecstasy in his house. and he now faces felony possession charges in addition to the charges of hacking.

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