The hackers who harvested an estimated 114,000 Apple iPad 3G owner e-mail addresses defended their actions Friday as "ethical" and said they did nothing illegal.
The hacking group Goatse Security obtained the e-mail addresses using an automated PHP script that collected iPad 3G owners' ICC-ID numbers and associated addresses from AT&T's servers using a publicly-available feature of the carrier's Web site.
AT&T disabled the feature last Tuesday, a day before the Valleywag Web site first reported the story.
"We believe what we did was ethical," said Goatse member Escher Auernheimer in a telephone interview today. "What we did was right."
I don't think hacking the addresses was ethical, BUT they did a service by finding the flaw and in a round about way reported it immediately. They didn't continue to do harm.