In an email to developers today, Apple revealed that its Developer Center website was breached by unknown hackers and was taken offline last Thursday as a precaution.
The company notes that sensitive personal information was "encrypted and cannot be accessed" but that Apple's engineers "could not rule out the possibility" that developer names, mailing addresses and email addresses may have been accessed.
Apple says it is overhauling its developer systems, updating software and rebuilding the entire developer database. There is no indication of when the site will be back up, other than the company saying it expects to have it up again soon.
Apple Developer Website Update
Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.
In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.
Apple told Macworld that the breached server was not associated with any customer information and that all personal information is encrypted -- additionally, the attackers did not get access to any app code or to any servers where app information is stored.
