The Apple Developer Center website is once again available in full to the public. With no comment, Apple restored the site at about 5PM EST, with no difference in user experience. The restoration of the site ends an eight-day period of unavailability, where Apple initially had no information to share, and ultimately the source of the hack was traced to a “white hat” security researcher. In response to the intrusion, Apple posted a new “system status” page for the Developer Center, keeping users appraised of the situation.
The ongoing downtime of the iOS/OS X Developer Center was linked to a hacking attempt, Apple admitted. “Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website,” an updated site message reads. “Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.”
A man named Ibrahim Balic identified himself on July 22 as the person behind a hack of the Apple Developer Center. Balic describes himself as a “security researcher,” only interested in seeing “how deep” he could go rather than causing any problems. He adds that he reported 13 bugs to Apple, one of which allowed him to gain access to user information.
