Apple iCloud Fappening
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Posted on 03/15/2016 8:20:10 PM PDT by Swordmaker
A man has been charged with hacking the Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts of celebrities and stealing nude photos and videos from them.
The US authorities say Ryan Collins has agreed to plead guilty to the offence.
Prosecutors have recommended that he face a jail term of 18 months, although a judge could extend that to five years.
The 36-year-old is alleged to have stolen usernames and passwords via a phishing scam.
The Department of Justice said that the Pennsylvania-based Collins had admitted to breaking into more than 100 accounts between November 2012 and September 2014.
He is said to have achieved this by sending emails to the victims that pretended to be from Google or Apple requesting their login details.
"[The] defendant used numerous fraudulent email addresses designed to look like legitimate security accounts from various internet service providers, including, for example, email.protection318@icloud.com, noreply_helpdesk0118@outlook.com and secure.helpdesk0119@gmail.com," said court filings.
Collins is accused of accessing at least 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts.
Once he had fooled their owners into handing over their details, prosecutors say, he searched through the victims' online data.
"Through his phishing scheme [the] defendant was also able to access full Apple iCloud back-ups belonging to numerous victims, including at least 18 celebrities, many of whom reside in the Los Angeles area," the court papers state.
"Many of these back-ups contained nude photographs and videos."
The celebrities are not named, but the attacks coincide with stolen photos of the actresses Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and others being posted to the internet in 2014, which was blamed on an iCloud breach at the time. Collins has not been accused of uploading the images for others to see.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
He got my password, looked at my pictures, and gave me a stronger password.
...And then he went and hacked and posted Hope Solo’s photos. That was worse punishment than Helen Thomas pics. Some of us are still permanently traumatized by that... beast.
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Wait, so he didn’t break into their accounts? They gave him the passwords bc he phished them all? You’ve got to be kidding.
Social hacking is WAY easier than the real thing.
Let him hack that terrorist’s phone and he can cut a deal on his sentence.
You’re correct about the Hope Solo photos. That was a bit rough.
These guys used that and also answering their oh, to easy security questions to get in and change their passwords. Celebrities selected questions such as "What was your mother's maiden name?" and "What elementary school did you go to when you were eight years old?" which are dead easy to learn the answers to for any celebrity merely by reading their fanzine biographies. Had they been smart the answer to the first question would have been "Lobster Thermidor" and to the Second "San Quentin Prison." That way what the bad guys learned in the bio wouldn't have gotten them in.
“Wait, so he didn’t break into their accounts? They gave him the passwords bc he phished them all? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Most of these systems ask common backup questions if you forget your password. Like the name of your pet or the first school that you attended. Information that isn’t hard to find about celebrities. So the hacker uses the answers to these questions to gain access to the accounts.
Innocent. But only if he has more pics
Did you see any requirement celebrities had to be bright?
Who is that?
She needs a lift, two lifts.
Perhaps, but I think she is NOT GUILTY. ;^)
I think I just earned an AA degree in gynecology. Sheesh.
I've got a couple of free hands.
I’m learning that the field of gynecology is not as glamorous as previously thought.
Huh? Did Hope Solo not look so good?
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