A Forbes.com explains that a former contributor for Gizmodo, Mat Honan, was the original victim of the attack. Hackers were able to access Honan's iCloud account, and remotely wipe his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. The original theory was that the hackers used a brute force attack to crack Honan's iCloud password, but further investigation revealed that social engineering was used to convince Apple the attackers were Honan, and Apple gave them the keys to walk right in.

Color me incredulous!

Why? Well, I have my own story of Apple woe--and it's the exact opposite experience. I somehow lost access to my own email address for use on iTunes, iCloud, and other Apple services, and it took months of fighting with Apple Support to finally get to the bottom of things and get into my own account. I couldn't get Apple Support to give me access to my own account, never mind someone else's.

I had originally set up my Apple ID using my primary email address. I didn't have any problem for months, maybe even years. Then, one day it simply wouldn't work. The Apple system claimed it was already in use on another Apple ID account.

I assumed I'd been hacked somehow. It's my email address. I own the domain. Nobody else could possibly use my email address with a different Apple ID account "on accident".