Virginia Teacher Sentenced to 34 Months in Prison for 2014 Celebrity iCloud Hack

[apolloa]

Only 34 months. Wow, doesn’t seem worth the effort if court time..

Still at least he’s actually going to prison, usually these hackers, like those who stole millions of Sony PlayStation Network account details, are let off by said company.. or the courts don’t fully understand the crime and are lenient on them.

 

[miniyou64]

Compensation from whom? This guy was a school teacher. Are you saying you would trust him with your children? If you were an employer knowing what he did, would you trust him at all? How would this guy earn money to compensate you? And how much is your reputation worth?

Part of the reason for a jail sentence is retribution or revenge as you like to call it. But part is also to act as a deterent. Would you prefer that when someone commits a crime like this we just say, "It's OK, you just compensate the victims for their loss and we'll call it even. And if you can't compensate, just don't do it again."

You have a very odd perspective on the world, miniyou64.

If jail as a deterrent was so successful I suppose we wouldn’t have any crime in the world now would we? Also the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. By a large margin. I think the culture of the US where we jail anything anytime someone does something we don’t like is the real problem.

 

[Breaking Good]

If jail as a deterrent was so successful I suppose we wouldn’t have any crime in the world now would we? Also the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. By a large margin. I think the culture of the US where we jail anything anytime someone does something we don’t like is the real problem.

You are confusing socio-economic based crime with this crime which was simply malicious. This individual was a school teacher. He knew right from wrong and had plenty of opportunity to right, but chose to do wrong.

Now if you want to talk about the amount of money we as a country throw away on the criminal justice system between the police, the courts and warehousing (keeping in cages) offenders instead of targeting at-risk youths with prevention programs to keep them from committing crimes in the first place, then yeah, I can get behind you on that. But that isn't the case in this instance.

 

[Doctor Q]

Brannan was the guilty party this time, but we're leaving the door open for other people like this when we use weak passwords. Most people know that. What people less often realize is that giving honest answers to a website's "security questions" is a mistake.

He was able to obtain full iCloud backups, photographs, and other information using phishing email accounts that were designed to look like legitimate emails from Apple. He also hacked email accounts by answering security questions using data found on victims' Facebook accounts.

When a website asks you for your dog's name or the first street you lived on, treat it as another password field. Answer with a random string and store it in your password list or password manager app. Even putting a sticky note on your screen is better than sharing that information with yet another website, because it's easy for ill-intentioned people to look up that information.