Apple has explained that an issue that briefly affected developer accounts today was caused by a bug and not a security breach as some had speculated.
Earlier today (Wednesday), handfuls of reports came in around an anomaly that changed some developers’ home addresses within Apple’s system to a location in Russia. Given recent history, including the hacking of Hilary Clinton’s campaign boss’s email account from suspected Russia-based actors, word of the strange incident prompted concern that it may have been triggered by the involvement of an unauthorized third party.
Apple, however, said its systems had not been breached.
The company issued the following note to developers which explains that an unspecified bug caused the temporary issue, which it said impacted “some” but seemingly not all developers:
Due to a bug in our account management application, your address information was temporarily displayed incorrectly in your account details on the Apple Developer website. The same incorrect address was displayed to all affected developers. The underlying code-level bug was quickly resolved and your address information now shows correctly. There was no security breach and at no time were the Apple Developer website, applications, or services compromised; nor were any of your Apple Developer membership details accessed by, shared with, or displayed to anyone.
Back in 2013, Apple’s Developer Center went down for a three-day spell after being hacked, but this week’s incident isn’t a repeat of that, despite how delicious a pairing Russian hackers and Apple developers maybe be to some.