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Gawker said the hacker group that breached AT&T's network obtained the e-mail addresses of top level politicians, television reporters and business executives, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (check out my colleague, Michael Shear's story on iPads in the White House inner circle).

AT&T did not say how many customers were affected. But Gawker, which reported the breach earlier Wednesday, said 114,000 e-mail addresses were exposed. Apple, which says it has sold 2 million iPads since it was launched last April, did not immediately respond to an interview request. (Check out our photo gallery of iPad buyers.)

From Gawker:

"The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised."

"The issue has escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses," AT&T said in a statement.

AT&T, which is Apple's exclusive partner on the iPad and iPhone, said it was informed on Monday of the security breach by one of its business customers. The person or group that first discovered the security hole did not contact AT&T, the wireless company said.

"We continue to investigate and will inform all customers whose email addresses and ICC Ids may have been obtained. At this point there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared," AT&T said.

The security problem comes amid increasing concern by regulators and lawmakers of the protection of personal data on the Internet. Google last month disclosed that when compiling pictures for its Street View application, its cameras had collected personal data from residential WiFi networks. That admission has sparked lawsuits and investigations by regulators around the globe.

Gawker reported that the information was obtained by a hacker group calling itself Goatse Security. The group used a script on AT&T's website, accessible to anyone on the internet, to get the data.

"When provided with an ICC-ID as part of an HTTP request, the script would return the associated email address," Gawker reported. The Web site's security researchers were able to guess a large swath of ICC IDs by looking at known iPad 3G ICC IDs publically displayed on the Web.

It is unclear how the mishap will affect AT&T's relationship with its partner, Apple. iPhone users have complained about network congestion problems with the exclusive partner and Verizion Wireless customers have waited anxiously for Apple to strike a business deal with their provider.