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Comment by dave1010uk | Hacker News Reader

Not not often one to praise Apple, but I'm really impressed that they spent the time they did to fix this. Apple are known for their strong brand and taking down the dev centre for so long must have been an awkward decision between the marketing side and the technical one.

I don't know the extent of the problem but taking down an online service for weeks is very uncommon. I guess (speculating a bit) that Apple could have applied a quick fix to the problem within a day to save their (short term, at least) brand appearance. I think "just getting it secure enough" is the most many people would do if an important service was down. It appears that Apple took the time required to deploy a proper fix, prioritising security over shot term wins.

It would be interesting to see what someone like Microsoft or Amazon would have done in this situation, or what Apple would have done if it was all of iTunes instead of the dev centre.

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You're impressed they spent time keeping their cash cow alive? No offense to the developers, but there has been very little to no communication. I'm magically waiting for the guy with the best F5 time on the dashboard to get my news? Again, no offense to the developers, but there's no indication that this was not a "quick fix" by industry standards (of security) and not just "secure enough."

As usual, a dashboard of green lights does not identify uptime, as can be established by the issues people are still having with the platform.

>No offense to the developers, but there has been very little to no communication.

There's been weekly or slightly shorter than weekly updates and a 24-hour status page. Also, most key portal functionality was available not that long after the breach.

It's a little unfair to say "very little to no communication".

Communication that says they are down and that's it. I sent mail to support and they sent me a mail asking me to wait. I had to wait for a month now to accept the new license.

In my books, that is no communication. They haven't told us what the problem was at the end of the day.

They did nothing good here. They fucked up and took forever to fix it. Please stop apologising for them.

Oh I'm not apologising for them, they still messed up (and I still actively discourage people from buying Apple products). I don't use any Apple products / services, so their downtime didn't bother me. Their lack of communication is bad but I'd prefer poor communication over poor security.

We know they didn't push a quick hacky fix live. I think it's quite likely (due to the resources they have) that they deployed a proper fix, not sacrificing security for a faster response. I could be wrong.

Does anyone know of a centralised database of security breaches? It would be great if there were a standard (like CVEs), which included how well the breach was dealt with (eg informing public, mitigation, prevention, changes made). If there isn't one and there's interest here then maybe I'll start one.

You are very generous with your praise.

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