Apple is working closely with law enforcement agencies in the US to discover the source of a serious hack against its internal network last month, according to information released by the AFP news agency.
Apple is the latest in a growing list of major players in the technology and media sector that have been victims of significant hacks in the last month. In January, Facebook, Twitter, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, were all subject to successful or semi-successful hacks.
The latest data suggests that each of the technology companies were subject to the same hijacking attempt.
According to each of the companies the hack was instigated by the use of malware that was hosted in a Java application on a mobile developers’ website. Apple says that in its case only a small number of computers, which were isolated from the main network, were compromised and there is no evidence “that any data left Apple.”
Writing on its corporate blog on Friday Facebook said that it had been targeted in a sophisticated hack back in January. Facebook says that no user’s data or company information was compromised in that hack. This would appear to be the same hacking attempt made against Twitter at around the same time in January; Twitter says that in the attack against it some users’ information was taken but much of this was encrypted.
In this environment of heightened security concerns Google has released an advisory to users telling them how to make their Gmail and Google accounts more secure. There is no suggestion that Google was also a victim of the same hack that caught Twitter, Facebook, and Apple.
The series of hacks against high-profile US tech companies forced Oracle to release a patch for its Java application, which was the vehicle for the attacks, and led to the U.S government warning the public not to use the application where possible. Apple took the added step of releasing its own Java patch for Mac users, which disabled some of Java’s processes.
With both Facebook and Twitter warning that other companies may have also been compromised it may very well be likely that in the coming days more big-name tech companies will be making similar admissions.
