Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley recently said her iTunes account was compromised by identity thieves and that she will press Apple for answers. It is unclear how the thieves gained access to Coakley’s account, perhaps through an application, but the hackers stole credit card information and made fraudulent purchases, ThreatPost said. Coakley brought up the attack during a speech for the launch of the Massachusetts Advanced Cyber Security Center. She noted that Dell blocked her credit card when the hackers tried to purchase a computer, believing the purchase to be fraudulent. Apple, however, did not. Coakley said she would reach out to the iPhone maker and demand information. ThreatPost argued that Coakley might have been speaking so strongly in an effort to build support for Massachusetts’ state data privacy, data protection and data breach notification laws. Coakley believes companies such as Apple should be held liable when in violation of the aforementioned laws. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office said any company that has had a breach which “creates a substantial risk of identity theft or fraud against a resident of the commonwealth,” should publicly disclose the attack.
