After the epic hack on tech journalist Mat Honan, both Amazon and Apple have put their hands up over the matter, and have taken steps to improve user account security. Well, sort of.

Amazon, in a response via Twitter, confirmed that they were partly at fault for the breach, as well as confirming that the loophole has been closed.

Interestingly, however, Apple has stated that the customer service rep who took the hacker’s call had not followed standard operating procedures. Apparently, Apple is stating that their security policy is more stringent. However, an inside source from Apple told Wired that the rep was “absolutely” in compliance with Apple security policy.

In any case, Apple has instructed all support staff to cease all processing of AppleID password changes over the phone for at least 24 hours, which should be enough time for them to come up with a viable solution to prevent similar hacks in the future.

(Source: Gizmodo (1), (2))