The FBI has denied that one of its laptops containing millions of Apple device ID numbers was hacked.
The AntiSec hacking group claiming on Tuesday that it had taken a document containing 12 million Apple Unique Device ID numbers (UDIDs) as well as names, user names, contacts and other key information, from the computer of FBI agent Christopher Stangl.
But on Wednesday the FBI said the claims were "totally false".
In a statement it said:
"The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed.
"At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data."
But the FBI denial was ridiculed by Anonymous and other hackers.
Antisec claims to have more than 12m Apple UDIDs, listed alongside user names, device names, phone numbers, addresses and notification tokens.
The group said it suspects the FBI had the information to track iPhone users. It did not release all of the information it claims to have, but said there was enough for users to search for their own devices.
In a long statement published online, the group said "we decided we'd help out Internet security by auditing FBI first."
During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java.
"During the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose."
The group also said it was releasing the file to make sure that people "pay attention" to the alleged surveillance by FBI officers.