• If not for our firm talking about the exploit to third parties who subsequently notified them, they would have never fixed it. We know what we did was right.
• Goatse Security representative Escher Auernheimer • Responding to a letter from AT&T notifying its users of the iPad security breach the group found last week. AT&T called his group malicious hackers who wanted publicity. (You’d think the name was enough for that, but …) Auernheimer, on the other hand, called AT&T out for taking a number of days to actually inform its users of the breach. Expect some sort of legal action soon. source

• yes Gawker was contacted by the FBI as part of an investigation into that 3G iPad data leak thang.
• unlikely The chance that the FBI has a case; Goatse Security grabbed their info from a public site. source

• It’s pretty egregious that AT&T would have it for such a device that probably has known exploit candidates (attack code) on, say, the Russian (underground) markets.
• Escher “Weev” Auernheimer of Goatse Security • Talking about how his group uncovered a major flaw with AT&T’s security mechanism, which led to Gawker posting about the results. Why did they go to Gawker and not AT&T? “We did want not engage directly with AT&T in case they tried to serve us (an injunction) or something,” he said. How did they do it? It was a simple brute-force attack that required no hacking. And people offended about the group’s hilarious name? “If someone is offended to where they can’t deal with us … then they’re a douche bag and we don’t want to be employed by them anyway.” A fun read. source

• This is us. We admit to being very heavy users. But, even then, we’ve only modestly crossed over the 2-gigabyte threshold AT&T has given us. This isn’t hard to find, either. Log into your AT&T Wireless account, head to the “My Current Usage” screen, click “View Past Data Usage,” and run one of the reports. It’s pretty surprising. We’d end up spending $5 more than we do currently under this plan for most of the months. source

• good AT&T will FINALLY allow data tethering via the iPhone, after blocking it for years.
• bad AT&T will no longer offer unlimited data plans, but instead two tiered data plans.
• okay Old customers won’t be forced to switch, but new customers will have no choice.

The new charges

• $15the cost per month for the 200-megabyte “DataPlus” plan; it’s $15 for each additional 200 megs
• $25 the cost per month for the 2-gigabyte “DataPro” plan; it’s $10 for each additional gigabyte

The bullet points

• » Why do this, anyway? Because AT&T found in its research that most customers only used a certain amount of data, and a small number of users accounted for most of the bandwidth-sucking data usage. Take that as you will, kids. On the plus side, AT&T is at least trying to make the new charges somewhat friendly to consumers, allowing for retroactive changes between the two plans.
• » The wildcard, of course? AT&T is the first company to do this. Which means that Verizon, Sprint, all those other companies? They still have unlimited data plans. And if Verizon gets the iPhone like is being predicted, it seriously puts them at an advantage. source

• 2007 Apple sets a contract with AT&T to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone, but nobody knows how long.
• 2008 In the midst of a class-action lawsuit, the end date comes out, and
  it’s in 2012. The market begins to evolve.
• 2010 Engadget finds this
  detail and posts about
  it, but suggests that
  the contract may have
  changed. source

• With all the network problems AT&T is famous for having, getting a 4G wireless router from Sprint actually seems like a pretty appealing alternative to getting the 3G iPad. (Wired gave the Sprint Overdrive a very favorable review last month, going so far as to suggest you could probably get by with it, an iPod Touch and VoIP, and have better service than Apple’s AT&T miserableness.) It’s a good thing that Sprint has even gotten a case together that makes it even easier to switch. Excuse us while we briefly consider this brilliant idea. source

• Seems the one thing iPhone users hate the most about their phones is the carrier. Apple’s had an exclusive contract with AT&T for nearly three years now, and with the dropped calls and lack of network expansion, users want another option. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon will get a version of the iPhone this year. It’d be awesome, but let’s remember that analysts have been burned before by the promise of Verizon. source.

• The original commercial Dish Network’s main selling point? It’s cheaper, and it offers the same quality of product as DirecTV. It’s not nearly the same as, say, AT&T and Verizon’s competing maps, but it understandably might provoke a response from DirecTV.
• The (supposed) rip-off And here’s that response! It’s honestly a more clever approach, using Alex Trebek in a Jeopardy-style game. However, if you listen about halfway through, you’ll hear the same kind of message as the original commercial in this clip, too. source

• bad Underdog smartphone maker Palm is still doing rotten with its stock price and, with the Pre’s lacking success, could die eventually.
• good On the plus side, they just added another carrier. AT&T has the iPhone AND Pre Plus. Is it time to upgrade, iPhone fans? source