Remember early June? Summer nights, trendy flip flops, drinks on restaurant patios, etc.? June 10th shattered all those fuzzy feelings with news of a massive security breach affecting iPad 3G owners. “Shattered” might be a bit overdramatic, but let’s just go with it in the interest of moving the story along.
The short and skinny was that AT&T, which provides data service to 3G-enabled iPads, hadn’t locked down part of its website. And hackers discovered that when feeding the numeric ID associated with a particular iPad’s 3G connection into this website, the site would spit the iPad owner’s e-mail address back out. The hackers then automated the feeding of random ID numbers into the site until they got back a bunch of e-mail addresses.
The “collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers,” as reported by Gawker (which broke the initial story) who had their personal information stolen included “thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media.”
Fast forward to today, and two men—Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer—have been charged with one count each of fraud and one count each of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization, according to Reuters.
The men apparently notified AT&T of the security hole before providing Gawker with a list of e-mail addresses and ID numbers gathered as a result of the breach, though it’s unknown whether anything more nefarious was ever done with the leaked information. Both men are expected in court today.
More on TIME.com:
Security Breach Exposed iPad 3G Owners’ E-mail Addresses
Verizon iPad Also Coming, But Will We Have To Wait For iPad 2?