Biggest Celebrity Hack ever
Tumultuous bedlam and fuss, because to cut a long story short, it seems that America’s biggest hack has just taken place. On Sunday evening, a hacker got into 4Chan (a site where everyone can upload messages and photos) and posted hundreds of naked photos of famous Americans. There are apparently loads more but the list so far contains Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian and Kate Upton. Jennifer Lawrence was hit really hard, her photos were quite explicit and of images that you really, do not want to share with the world.
How did this happen? The guilty party appears to be iCloud, even though Apple has not yet made an official statement. If you take a photo with your iPhone it automatically and within seconds gets added to your photo stream, which is linked to all your other Apple-devices. Even if you delete the photo from your phone, it still lands in the stream. The story is that someone hacked all the celebrities iCloud accounts and got to their photos. Doesn’t seem too hard for a handy hacker, since your iCloud is only protected by a password and an email address. It seems to have something to do with the function Find My iPhone, exactly how and what is still unclear, especially because some of the photos go back years and years.
Team Lawrence have since confirmed that the photos are genuine, and have warned that any website found using them will find themselves in court. And justly so, it’s a ridiculous violation of their privacy. Actress Mary E. Winstead wrote on Twitter: “To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves”. And then “Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.”
And that is exactly what this is. Imagine if you had sent a few sexy photos to your previous (or current) partner a few years ago, and then wake up one morning to find the ENTIRE world looking at them. I’d explode. Hopefully this doesn’t grow into anything bigger and that the responsible person gets locked away for years.
