Celebrity photos hacked in 2014

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The 2014 hacker attack on private photos of celebrities (known as The Fappening or Celebgate in online culture ) describes the unlawful acquisition and publication of private photos of young, predominantly female celebrities in the USA , which apparently come from cracked accounts of the Apple service iCloud .

History of origin

On August 31, 2014, photos that had been illegally obtained were posted on the 4chan website . These photographs were offered in exchange for bitcoins . Alleged victims of the first wave of the exploit included Jennifer Lawrence , Jenny McCarthy , Rihanna , Kate Upton , Mary Elizabeth Winstead , Kirsten Dunst , Ariana Grande and Victoria Justice . Lawrence and Winstead confirmed the incident and the authenticity of the recordings. Grande and Justice denied that they could be seen in the photos.

Kirsten Dunst responded on Twitter with a sarcastic "Thank you, iCloud" to the publication of the pictures. Initially, there was no reliable indication of the sources from which and how the pictures were stolen. The US Federal Police FBI intervened in the investigation.

The incident has been given many names by the internet community, including "Celebgate" (named after the famous celebrity site Celeb.Gate.cc - derived from Watergate ) and "The Fappening" (a suitcase word from the English word happening (event - with reference on the movie The Happening ) and fap , a slang term for male masturbation ).

On September 21, private pictures and videos of various American celebrities were released for the second time. Those affected this time apparently include the football player Hope Solo as well as Hayden Panettiere , Kim Kardashian , Rihanna , Avril Lavigne , Vanessa Hudgens , Kate Bosworth , Emily Ratajkowski , Aubrey Plaza , Leelee Sobieski , Mary-Kate Olsen , Gabrielle Union as well as Alyson and Amanda Michalka .

In the third wave of publications at the end of September, pictures of the model Cara Delevingne , the actress Anna Kendrick and the three-time beach volleyball Olympic champion Misty May-Treanor appeared.

On October 3, 2014, a fourth wave of publications affected Victoria's Secret model Erin Heatherton , actresses Winona Ryder , AnnaLynne McCord and Zoe Kazan, and singer Ingrid Michaelson . For the first time a man, the reality TV star Nick Hogan, son of the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan , was among the victims - the hackers apparently gained access to Hogan's entire photo archive from the past eight years.

On March 15, 2017, pictures by Emma Watson , Dylan Penn and Fergie , among others , were published again as The Fappening 2.0 . It is still unknown whether and how these are related to the 2014 publication.

iCloud data

In the proceedings against the hacker Ryan Collins it turned out that the access data was not, as initially suspected, obtained via the security hole in "Find My iPhone" and iBrute, but via simple phishing emails to the celebrities, in which they were asked to register prompted in iCloud and Gmail .

distribution

After the original release on 4chan , the recordings quickly spread across the internet. Attempts by victim advocates to contain the spread have so far not been successful.

The blogger Perez Hilton published the photos on his blog after they appeared, but shortly thereafter took them off the Internet and apologized for his behavior.

There was a lot of activity on the reddit website . A so-called subreddit was created there to further publish the photos, which had 75,000 subscribers in one day. The website administrators have been criticized for their inaction. The recordings were probably already circulating on the Internet a few weeks before they were published on August 31, 2014, but were rather privately exchanged there. However, the background is still unclear. It is claimed that other files remained unpublished, including video recordings.

Condemnation

American hacker Ryan Collins was sentenced to 18 months in prison in October 2016 after pleading guilty to unauthorized access to 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts. According to the investigation, he phished the accounts of mostly female celebrities for two years .

Three other hackers, including George G., were convicted. The latter had gained access to more than 550 iCloud and Gmail accounts . One Illinois man was sentenced to jail and one Pennsylvania man was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2016. In 2019, an ex-teacher was sentenced to 34 months in prison. The 31-year-old has hacked over 200 iCloud, Facebook and Yahoo accounts. Not only were celebrities among them, he also hacked the accounts of his sister-in-law, who was still underage at the time, as well as those of colleagues and students at the school he had worked at.

Reactions

After it became known that the photos were obtained from victims through social engineering or phishing of iCloud access data, Tim Cook , Apple's CEO , announced further measures to improve the security of the iCloud service in the Wall Street Journal . Among other things, users should in future be notified by email when iCloud data is transferred to a newly registered device.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stolen nude photos: Hackers publish photos of models and actresses. In: Der Spiegel . October 6, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Martin Landi: Stars' nude photo attack may have been down to password codes. In: Irish Independent . September 2, 2014, accessed September 1, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Ella Alexander: 4Chan nude photo hacker disappointed by lack of money earned from naked celebrity leaks: 'I really didn't get close to what I was hoping'. In: The Independent . September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Charles Arthur: Nude celebrity picture leak looks like phishing or email account hack. In: The Guardian . September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Rich McCormick: Reported iCloud hack leaks hundreds of nude celebrity photos. In: The Verge . September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Anshu Shrivastava: Celebrities' Leaked Nude Photos: Master-List Printed, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence, Kaley Cuoco, Rihanna, More Names On It. (No longer available online.) In: International Business Times . September 1, 2014, archived from the original on September 2, 2014 ; accessed on March 12, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / au.ibtimes.com
  7. ↑ Josie Ensor: Nude Jennifer Lawrence photos leaked by hacker who claims to have 'private pictures of 100 A-listers'. In: The Daily Telegraph . September 1, 2014, accessed September 1, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Jenn Selby: Mary E. Winstead nude photo leak: 'To those looking at photos I took with my husband, hope you feel great about yourselves'. In: The Independent. September 1, 2014, accessed September 1, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Ariana Grande Denies Authenticity of Alleged Leaked Nude Photos. In: Billboard . August 31, 2014, accessed September 1, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Entry by Kirsten Dunst on her Twitter account
  11. ↑ Katy Forrester: Kirsten Dunst: "Thank you iCloud" - actress jokes about hacking scandal after her nude photos were leaked. In: Mirror . September 2, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Fernando Alfonso III: Hundreds of alleged celebrity nudes leak on the seediest corners of the Web. In: Daily Dot. August 30, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Zachary Volkert: The Fappening - Are Naked Jennifer Lawrence Photos Worse For Apple or Feminism? In: The Inquisitr . September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  14. Jump up ↑ New Stolen Celebrity Nude Photos: What To See. In: tz . September 21, 2014, accessed September 22, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Hacker attack: Nude pictures of Kim Kardashian online. In: evening newspaper . September 21, 2014, accessed September 22, 2014 .
  16. ↑ 'The Fappening': Rihanna 'nude pictures' claims emerge on 4Chan as hacking scandal continues. In: The Independent. September 21, 2014, accessed September 22, 2014 .
  17. ↑ Marlow Stern: 'The Fappening 4': More Celeb Nudes Leak Online Including the First Man, Seems to Be Dying Down , thedailybeast.com, October 5, 2014
  18. ↑ http://www.n-tv.de/folk/Sean-Penns-T Nahrungsmittel-nackt-im-Netz- article19755403.html
  19. ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Fappening-2-0-Wieder-verstaeckt-Abzocke-mit-Promi-Nacktbildern-3660672.html
  20. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/emma-watson-other-female-celebs-victims-of-new-photo-leaks#.wp3LVMV3B
  21. ↑ http://www.mactechnews.de/news/article/Promi-Nacktbilder-gerieten-nicht-durch-iCloud-Luecke-in-Umlauf-163678.html
  22. ↑ Ryall Jenni: Social Media Goes Wild Over Massive Celebrity Nude Photo Leak. In: Mashable . August 31, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  23. ↑ Jenn Selby: Perez Hilton apologises for Jennifer Lawrence naked photo leak. In: The Independent. September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  24. ↑ Michelle Jaworski: Perez Hilton removes 'Celebgate' photos, calling his post a mistake. In: Daily Dot. September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  25. ↑ Rob Price: Reddit's privacy rules fail as celebrity nudes spread like wildfire. In: Daily Dot. September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  26. ↑ Jordan Sargent: Is This 4chan Offshoot the Ground Zero for the Leaked Celebrity Nudes? In: Gawker. September 1, 2014, accessed March 12, 2016 .
  27. ↑ Hacker who stole nude photos of celebrities gets 18 months in prison. In: theguardian . October 28, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2017 .
  28. ↑ heise online: The Fappening: Fourth celebrity photo hacker convicted. Retrieved May 5, 2019 .
  29. ↑ Connecticut Man Charged with Hacking Apple iCloud Accounts Belonging to More Than 250 People, Including Many Celebrities. January 11, 2018, accessed May 5, 2019 .
  30. ↑ heise online: Nude photo phishing: Ex-teacher goes to prison for "Celebgate". Retrieved May 5, 2019 .
  31. ↑ Daisuke Wakabayashi: Tim Cook Says Apple to Add Security Alerts for iCloud Users. In: Wall Street Journal . September 5, 2014, accessed on 12 March 2016 (English).