Bangalore: “It’s not FBI, it’s us from whom the hackers stole millions of Apple IDs,” told BlueToad Inc, a Florida based digital edition publishing company to Reuters about the online release of around 1 million Apple device IDs last week. The hacker group had claimed to have obtained the data from the laptop of an FBI agent.

"We want to apologize, announce what happened and set the record straight," said Paul DeHart, CEO of the software company, which was later confirmed by the FBI.

According to DeHart, BlueToad, the digital publishing company experiences about 1,000 unsuccessful break-in attempts a day. It hosts more than 5,000 worldwide publications including consumer magazines and business documents, and creates apps for its clients.

But opposing the claim of hackers to have obtained about 12 million device IDs, DeHart said the original number was fewer than 2 million. “We came to know about the hack, after a third party who had examined the online leaked IDs and informed us, ‘hey, we see some connections to you guys.’ The attack that we got was pretty sophisticated, pretty determined," DeHart continued.

According to DeHart, his company is fully cooperating with FBI in the proceedings.

The leaked IDs were essentially unique device identifiers or UDIDs of devices like iPad or iPhone, which the application publishers and gaming networks use to identify its users.

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