Apple 'Actively Investigating' Possible Hacking of Celebrity iCloud Accounts

[apolloa]

Still not confirmed that the two are related.

No, I'm more then sure it is pure utter coincidence, Apple would never have blindingly obvious security holes would they.
So you claim they have remained quiet due to the American holiday, yesterday, yet they felt the need to patch this security hole, over the American holiday..

 

[Steve121178]

That's fine of she takes naked photos but she also has to be willing to suffer the consequences of having them stored on a cloud somewhere. Also, celebs have to understand that part of the "deal" with being worshipped and being paid millions of dollars to make movies(hardly work) is that they lose some privacy and personal space.

If she doesn't like it, she could always get a job at a factory or at a department store in the mall where she won't be bothered. Right?

You couldn't be more wrong. These people should expect that their personal data be available to them only and safely secured.

If you had an attitude like that in I.T. you would be fired immediately.

 

[iososx]

Google must also be known for its inability to build a decent cloud service given the recent exploit in Google Drive......

And your point is?

Fear of Google?

At least they frequently innovate fearlessly.

No cloud is 100% safe, there's no secret there.

Google's contribution to our daily internet experience has been exemplary.

 

[Statusnone88]

The ones of Kate Upton were great.

Are you joking? She looks 1000x better with clothes on.

Becca Tobin's were fantastic. Even her Twitter response was amazing.

"Merry XXXmas" -Becca Tobins response from her Twitter account.

She just gained a fan from the response alone.

 

[pirateyarrr]

The key word is IF. Nobody knows at this point. IF it is confirmed that iCloud was hacked then yes Apple is in big doo doo.
Still not confirmed that the two are related.

Big doo doo?

This is what happens when any 8-year-old is able to post their uninformed opinions on the internet.

 

[mccldwll]

As I understand from the news and this forum Apples flaw was with the find my phone, it allowed you to try the password as many times as you wanted and didn't block your account after several attempts, Apple patched this hole over the American public holiday... and has remained very quiet bar stating it's investigating.

But that is an Apple fault, very very very poor security.

The news channels are also fully reporting all the information in this thread but as they point out, people delete their photos off their phones but the photos remain in the cloud, they are also reporting on Apple in the story, no one else.

No. The rumor that the brute force attack was the exploit was just that--a rumor. And, those photos only got to the cloud if it was enabled in settings. Further, the newsreaders now admit that AAPL only one among many. In fact, since so many pics clearly were taken with other equipment, the more likely source of the photo grab is elsewhere.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

The internet is forever. If you take pictures and put them on an internet device, you deserve whatever happens. If you don't want others to see naked pictures of yourself, show a little intelligence (and will-power) and don't use your phone to take them and don't keep them (unencrypted) on your PC.

There have been so many other instances of leaked internet pictures that if you haven't learned by now, there's no sympathy here...

 

[pirateyarrr]

rumor about apple... hits the first page instantly.

negative news about google... hits the first page instantly

negative news about apple... over 12 hours and not on the first page.

And that's why this site deserves to die.

----------

There have been so many other instances of leaked internet pictures that if you haven't learned by now, there's no sympathy here...

Yes, we know there's no sympathy from geeks that no one would ever be interested in seeing naked, ever. But to the normal world, the exposure of those pics is one step short of sexual assault.

You'd do well to at least understand the difference between yours and normal people's reactions to this leak. The other ship, the hope of you actually having a normal reaction, has obviously sailed.

 

[samcraig]

The internet is forever. If you take pictures and put them on an internet device, you deserve whatever happens. If you don't want others to see naked pictures of yourself, show a little intelligence (and will-power) and don't use your phone to take them and don't keep them (unencrypted) on your PC.

There have been so many other instances of leaked internet pictures that if you haven't learned by now, there's no sympathy here...

That's a very dangerous attitude.

 

[Aspasia]

No. The rumor that the brute force attack was the exploit was just that--a rumor. And, those photos only got to the cloud if it was enabled in settings. Further, the newsreaders now admit that AAPL only one among many. In fact, since so many pics clearly were taken with other equipment, the more likely source of the photo grab is elsewhere.

You're absolutely correct.

So many fools rush to judgment because it's easier than thinking, questioning, or waiting for the facts.

 

[Medic311]

The main hub for the compilation of leaked photos is hosted in India and has 5 mirroring sites. FBI and DOJ don't stand a chance at shutting it down. They tried to shut down the online casino sites so they all moved their sites to hosting companies abroad and the only thing that could be done was to block financial transactions.

Regardless of who these people were and if you think they deserved it, the fact is they didn't and what happened was wrong. They may live a celeb lifestyle with privileged treatment, drive fancy cars, and even do drugs on the side...many have already had wardrobe malfunctions in the past that get exposed by cameras taking 5 photographs a second at all angles as they step out of a car in a skirt. BUT all of these women have fathers and mothers and brothers/sisters, friends, boyfriends, and some of them are married. This leak brings public shame to everyone associated with these people and their lives are affected too. Not to mention some careers will be over for many of these actresses who already said they would never do a nude scene in a film bc their career is more important than money (some even mention Julia Roberts at having been their inspiration for acting). What people do in their private lives is different than what they would do in their public lives. We are all guilty of this and we would all react with disgust if one of these women were our sister, our daughter, our girlfriend, or fiancé/wife.

With that said, since none of the above applies to me I browsed through everything lol

 

[Primejimbo]

No, I'm more then sure it is pure utter coincidence, Apple would never have blindingly obvious security holes would they.
So you claim they have remained quiet due to the American holiday, yesterday, yet they felt the need to patch this security hole, over the American holiday..

This is normal. I work for a telecom company and we have techs fixing stuff 24/7/365 but the office people are off on holidays. The PR/office people are probably off while the "techs" are working putting in patches. All the tech companies that I worked/work for do stuff like this, so how would Apple be different?

 

[AaronEdwards]

No. The rumor that the brute force attack was the exploit was just that--a rumor. And, those photos only got to the cloud if it was enabled in settings. Further, the newsreaders now admit that AAPL only one among many. In fact, since so many pics clearly were taken with other equipment, the more likely source of the photo grab is elsewhere.

Yes, because these kinds of photos are always kept on the device that they were taken with and never sent to other devices.

That photos were taken with Android phones isn't proof that the main source here isn't iCloud. And in the same way just because photos were taken with iPhones isn't proof that the main source is iCloud.

But is anyone contesting that successful actresses (and their partners, friends, etc) as a group are more inclined to own and use iPhones? Or that a major security flaw was recently exposed, and then swiftly patched by Apple?

My guess here would be that the culprit (and maybe more people than just him) has know about the security flaw for a while and have been using it up and until it was fixed by Apple, and that someone else found it recently and released the python script on gitHub.

 

[Gasu E.]

And I use it for my photos just fine, if hackers want to take up their hard drive space with pictures of my two year old with spaghetti on his face and goofy memes sent through iMessages they can knock themselves out.

Incidentally (if this is an iCloud breach) I'd still feel safer with my photos there then I ever did taking them to get processed back in the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIBX5RrG4Q

 

[Medic311]

Yes, because these kinds of photos are always kept on the device that they were taken with and never sent to other devices.

That photos were taken with Android phones isn't proof that the main source here isn't iCloud. And in the same way just because photos were taken with iPhones isn't proof that the main source is iCloud.

But is anyone contesting that successful actresses (and their partners, friends, etc) as a group are more inclined to own and use iPhones? Or that a major security flaw was recently exposed, and then swiftly patched by Apple?

My guess here would be that the culprit (and maybe more people than just him) has know about the security flaw for a while and have been using it up and until it was fixed by Apple, and that someone else found it recently and released the python script on gitHub.

not sure about the details of the actual hacking itself that could have happened a while ago...but a lot has come out since the evening of 8/31 when this story first broke, and it was actually a ring of hackers who had all of these pictures in their possession for at least a week. one of them started dumping, and the others dumped as well. the fragmented albums and photos posted to this one site were then picked up by a user on 4chan and then were then collected by someone on reddit and 5 mirror sites were set up through a server in India which is still running probably at or above max capacity right now as the site is suffering from severe stability issues.

the guy on reddit had his google drive account shut down, but his several 660MB-1.1GB .ZIP dumps are are still up and running on Mega. since there doesn't exist a central established site to get the links from...it's already starting to lose steam. fringe reddit pages have popped up but mods keep shutting it down. at the peak, all 4 Mega sites were downloading at dial-up speeds

 

[Tiger8]

Maybe if these celebs weren't so careless (and clueless) this wouldn't happen.

I'm sure some of them will be happy they get some mention in the news nowadays.

Is it ever Apple's fault? People trusted Apple's 'industry leading' iCloud and it got hacked, how is that their fault?

 

[Fenez]

Well Kirsten Dunst knows hers were taken from Icloud.
Not saying its any of the celebrities fault, but...never ever put anything that you wouldn't want anyone to see on the internet ever..nothing is safe.

 

[Intelligent]

Because of blind followers like you that can't admit Apple could be at fault for anything. If they had no security against brute force password hacking (notice I said if) then yeah it is their fault.

Um wat? I can blame Apple but this time It wasn't their fault. These celebrities used to 500 most common passwords, they are the one to be blamed.

 

[samcraig]

Um wat? I can blame Apple but this time It wasn't their fault. These celebrities used to 500 most common passwords, they are the one to be blamed.

Wrong. They didn't post the photos. Someone hacked their account. That's illegal. Have a nice day.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Um wat? I can blame Apple but this time It wasn't their fault. These celebrities used to 500 most common passwords, they are the one to be blamed.

If this was done through the iCloud security flaw, then, yes, it is Apple's fault. You should not be able to brute force access.

Also, Apple (and the same goes for Google, etc) should force users to pick other passwords if they use any of the most common ones, or passwords that are deemed to be to easy.

 

[Mike MA]

What did Kirsten Dunst post? "Thank you iCloud". Well, something like this to happen truly is the worst case for Apple and it's trustability. Waiting for Samsung to bash on that one.

But I keep asking myself why celebrities still save and even worse upload their explicit photos onto their smartphones and cloud drives. They should be even more concerned about it compared to regular persons...well, maybe they don't think that much

 

[Intelligent]

Wrong. They didn't post the photos. Someone hacked their account. That's illegal. Have a nice day.

Okay? I never said that they weren't hacked, that they didn't post the photos or that it wasn't illegal. What i said was that Apple is not to blame.

 

[mccldwll]

Well Kirsten Dunst knows hers were taken from Icloud.
Not saying its any of the celebrities fault, but...never ever put anything that you wouldn't want anyone to see on the internet ever..nothing is safe.

Huh? Exactly how does she know that? How does she know they weren't grabbed from use of wifi?

 

[kevinof]

Wrong and if that's your attitude to security then please don't ever get into software development. Companies have to learn that security is not just a check box on a product sheet. It has to be the #1 priority , above the UX, features, performance and anything else. If you are handling user data then you better ensure that you are doing everything to keep it safe.

This does't just apply to Apple. it's the same with all the other data breaches that have happened over the last year. I doubt one of them would have happened it data security was the #1 priority.

Um wat? I can blame Apple but this time It wasn't their fault. These celebrities used to 500 most common passwords, they are the one to be blamed.

----------

Because the link between your browser and icloud is ssl and encrypted. Plus it looks like there are a lot of people (not just one) who got hacked. Would take some planning to act as the man in the middle for every one of these celebs.

Huh? Exactly how does she know that? How does she know they weren't grabbed from use of wifi?

 

[samcraig]

Okay? I never said that they weren't hacked, that they didn't post the photos or that it wasn't illegal. What i said was that Apple is not to blame.

No you said "These celebrities used to 500 most common passwords, they are the one to be blamed."

The celebrities are not to be blamed. They are victims of a crime. Are you going to suggest otherwise?