Hacking can indeed hurt some butt. (Screengrab)

NBC News is reporting the millions of Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDID) hackers say they snatched from an FBI agent's laptop actually came from Blue Toad Publishing, a Florida-based app developer. NBC reports that Blue Toad "provides private-label digital edition and app-building services to 6,000 different publishers, and serves 100 million page views each month."

A researcher named David Schuetz contacted Blue Toad last week with the suggestion the data actually came from them, and the company's engineers conducted a forensic analysis:

Paul DeHart, CEO of the Blue Toad publishing company, told NBC News that technicians at his firm downloaded the data released by Anonymous and compared it to the company's own database. The analysis found a 98 percent correlation between the two datasets.

Mr. DeHart told NBC that his company has "100 percent confidence" that the currently available UDIDs were in their system and likely hacked from Blue Toad servers a couple of weeks ago.

As NBC reports, Apple and the FBI have issued denials in connection with the hacker's claims regarding the data, which surfaced early last week. The FBI has denied the UDIDs were snatched from the compromised laptop of Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl and along with Apple insists it is not colluding with the feds in using the identifiers to track private citizens.

Anonymous and AntiSec, the sub-collective that released the initial 1 million numbers, have used the leaked UDIDs and their alleged connection to the FBI to shore up a contention that the government is invading our privacy and creating a dystopic surveillance state. If the numbers actually came from Blue Toad, has AntiSec resorted to what amounts to a kind of "false flag" operation to try and make a point?

At this time no Anonymous-associated Twitter account has responded to NBC's report. We will update this post if they do.

The initial response might include the question, what the heck was Blue Toad doing with all those numbers sitting in its servers in the first place?

Hacking can indeed hurt some butt. (Screengrab)

Hackers post their ideas of epic lulz on Pastebin all the time but it appears a late drop on Monday night by AntiSec, an Anonymous-affiliated group of hackers, could be pretty impressive if the claims prove true.

After the usual giddy preamble, Antisec explains in their Pastebin post how they snagged 12 million FBI-related Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs)--though at the moment they claim they've only posted 1 million:

During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device,type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.

The statement goes on to slam Gawker's Adrian Chen and express support for Wikileaks, Julian Assange and Pussy Riot, the Russian punk rockers recently convicted of "hooliganism."

As far as this claim goes, it's worth the trouble to track a few things down.

• The AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability in Java--This exploit was first disclosed in January, 2012. IBM's Internet Security Systems states the flaw makes it easy for a hacker to slip into the vulnerable computer and write and implement their own files.
• The unfortunate Christopher K. Stangl is, according to his LinkedIn page, a supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has been with the FBI since 2003 and does indeed work out of the Greater New York City area.

The post ends with further shout-outs and a non-sequitur in German, "Romney aber, sag's ihm, er kann mich im Arsche lecken!"--in English, "Romney, however, tell him he can kiss our asses!"

So on top of hacking Mr. Stangl's files and possibly compromising millions of Apple devices, the hackers are also clearly not Republicans.

An interesting addendum to this claim: Agent Christopher Stangl also appeared in this January Pastebin post of what appeared to be a hacked email to multiple law enforcement officials regarding an "Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call." The call was intended to discuss "Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and other associated splinter groups."

Groups which will apparently now be up for some intense discussion by the same officials, very soon.