Hackers hacked iCloud and laid out intimate photos of 100 Hollywood stars

Хакеры взломали iCloud и выложили в Сеть интимные фото 100 голливудских звезд

Candid photos of Hollywood stars, including actress Kirsten Dunst, singer Rihanna, star of Hunger Games Jennifer Lawrence and others, appeared in universal access. It is assumed that the pictures of the girls were abducted as a result of hacking iCloud.

As BuzzFeed reports, in addition to Lawrence and Rihanna, photos were also allegedly stolen from Mary Kate Olsen, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice, Kate Upton and others. On many images, the stars appeared in an unusual for the viewers - without make-up, and sometimes even half-naked. It is not clear yet whether all the photographs are authentic. In total, the list of affected celebrities has more than 100 names.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whose pictures were also on the network, confirmed their authenticity, noting that these photos were deleted a long time ago. "I can only guess what terrible efforts have been made to this," she added.

Representative Jennifer Lawrence also actually confirmed the authenticity of the images, calling the hacking "a flagrant violation of privacy." He threatened to prosecute both the hackers themselves and those who want to spread candid photos of the actress.

Over the past few months, hackers around the world have conducted many cyber attacks, resulting in hacked or stolen data from celebrities, politicians and companies. There were also opinions about how a loud scandal may affect Apple, even if not all participants of the plum used "apple" devices.

Closing the vulnerability

As it became known, Apple closed the vulnerability in iCloud, through which hackers stole intimate photos of celebrities.

Removing photos from the Internet

The leak of intimate photos of show business stars, which occurred on September 1, has already entered the history of the Internet. The network, as stated on various sources, flowed intimate pictures of almost a hundred Hollywood celebrities.

Among the famous victims are Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Kara Delevin, Avril Lavigne, Selena Gomez, Winona Ryder, Keith Bosworth, Amber Hurd and many others. Some victims claim that the leaked photos are not them. Although images are quickly removed from large online storages and blogs, they can not be removed from anywhere from the Internet.

Who kidnapped the photo?

The first mention of the images appeared on August 26 on an anonymous image board anon-ib.com, It.tut tells. Someone suggested buying pictures, leaving the email address [email protected]. Knowledge of the source and even the address of the mail is unlikely to help the investigation - to hide the geographical location of the author of the publication, and even more so the person on the Internet, is easy.

Хакеры взломали iCloud и выложили в Сеть интимные фото 100 голливудских звезд

From September 1, pictures began to scatter over the internet from the anonymous 4chan imageboard and the collective blog Reddit. One of the users of Reddit found that someone under the nickname BluntMastermind publishes new pictures before other sources. Another user in the screenshot with the "announcement" of the new photos offered for sale saw the name of the home network and the names of the computers in it - according to this information through a search on Google, he allegedly calculated the names and place of work of the distributor. The first user continued the investigation and found accounts with these names on Facebook, Steam and LinkedIn.

Хакеры взломали iCloud и выложили в Сеть интимные фото 100 голливудских звезд

"Accused" users of Reddit was the engineer-programmer Brian Hamad from the state of Georgia, USA. Hamad in an interview with the Daily Mail announced his non-involvement in the hacking. "I'm not behind all this. I lied to someone at Reddit in an attempt to sell a bitcoin for bitcoins, "he said. However, the publication notes that Hamad was capable of hacking: on the website of the company where he works, Hamad is described as a technical expert and specialist in PHP, MySQL and Java. Note that the investigation of Reddit users does not make Hamad the official defendant of the crime.

Two days before the leak, a representative of the hacker group HackApp published a script on PasteBin, allowing you to select a password for iCloud. Vulnerability allowed using the "Find iPhone" service to secretly pick up the password using the bruteforce method. Already on September 1, the vulnerability was closed by Apple.

Хакеры взломали iCloud и выложили в Сеть интимные фото 100 голливудских звезд

The first reports of hacking appeared before the script was published. Evidence that all photos were stolen from iCloud is also not. Theoretically possible, but in practice it is very difficult to establish who tried to select passwords to accounts, if it was done through the specified script.

You can also assume that hackers did not use the script for bruteforce, but phishing techniques, spreading malicious links in e-mails (for example, by inviting to a VIP event). In this case, it will be difficult for an attacker to compute to a technician.

There can be more than one person involved in the case: the author of the script or the Trojan may not be associated with hackers who broke into the "star accounts", hackers could not publish the pictures themselves, but resell them, and the resale chain can consist of many links.

One way or another, an attacker (or a group of intruders) faces a considerable time. The organizer of the "star leak" in September 2011, who published the stolen intimate photos of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and other celebrities, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of 72,000 dollars, although the accusation for 21 items provided for up to 121 years in prison in total.

Is the goal achieved?

Information from the e-mail boxes of stars, and especially from cloud storage - such as iCloud, interests hackers simply out of vanity, experts say. Information security specialist Infowatch has already called the leak of intimate photo stars "the biggest scandal in history" of this kind. It's not for nothing that American intelligence services have joined the investigation, which together with Apple continue to look for a hacker, who became the cause of the loudest "plum" on the Internet.

"The FBI is aware of reports that concern computer infiltration and illegal publication of materials with the participation of famous persons," the Wall Street Journal quotes the statement of the special services. Apple also announced participation in the investigation of the incident. "We take the privacy of users very seriously and study these reports," Cupertino said.

About the stage at which the investigation of the circumstances of the high-profile case is at present not yet reported, but it is known that the attacker himself or people acting on his behalf are not afraid to publicly address Internet users and even ask them for money for such " Feats. " In his appeal, the attacker stated that he had not engaged in Internet hacking, but simply "collected" photographs collected from various sources, the character of which the "collector" himself did not specify. Later, the alleged thief promised to publish more photos of naked stars - for donations from Internet users.

"People want ****** for free," the IB Times quotes a self-proclaimed "hacker" as saying. - Of course, I got $ 120 for my bitcoin-wallet and how much money (I paid a lot through the bitcoin system to get some photosets), I really did not get what I hoped for. " Is this self-proclaimed "hacker" the real reason for hacking, or is it just a rascal who decided to cash in on someone else's adventure, is unclear.

Archive of candid photos of celebrities

The archive of candid photos of celebrities can be found here . Note that the hackers posted on the Web so far the smallest part of the photos from all. The remaining pictures are intended to show the intruders in the near future for bitcoins.

Apple, for its part, did not comment on the situation, but reacted by closing the vulnerability in the "Find the iPhone" feature, which was used by hackers. It is reported that hackers were able to crack iCloud by selecting the password for accounts, which took some time. In this regard, according to one version, the conflict was deliberately planned before the release of the iPhone 6 by competitors.

Comments of celebrities themselves

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