2014 celebrity nude photo leak
On August 31, 2014, a collection of nearly five hundred private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and swiftly disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit.
The leak also prompted increased concern from analysts surrounding the privacy and security of cloud computing services such as iCloud—with a particular emphasis on their use to store sensitive, private information.
[10] The images were obtained via the online storage offered by Apple's iCloud platform for automatically backing up photos from iOS devices, such as iPhones.
[17][18] A major center of activity was the link-sharing website Reddit,[19] where a subreddit, /r/TheFappening, was created for sharing the photos;[20] in a single day, it amassed over 100,000 followers.
[24] The original release contained photos and videos of more than 100 individuals that were allegedly obtained from file storage on hacked iCloud accounts,[26] including some the leakers claimed were A-list celebrities.
[56] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that in response to the leak, the company planned to take additional steps to protect the privacy and security of iCloud users in the future.
[59] On October 1, 2014, Google was threatened with a $100 million lawsuit by lawyer Martin Singer on behalf of unnamed victims of the leak, alleging that Google had refused to respond to requests for the images to be removed from its platforms (including Blogger and YouTube), "[failing] to act expeditiously, and responsibly to remove the images", and "knowingly accommodating, facilitating, and perpetuating the unlawful conduct".
[63] The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was "aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter".
[64] Similarly, Apple stated that it had been investigating whether a security breach of the iCloud service was responsible for the leaked photographs, as per the company's commitment to user privacy.
[55][65] On September 2, 2014, Apple reported that the leaked images were the result of compromised accounts, using "a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet".
[5][6] In October 2014, the FBI searched a house in Chicago, Illinois and seized several computers, cellphones and storage drives after tracking the source of a hacking attack to an IP address linked to an individual named Emilio Herrera.
[66][67] In March 2016, 36-year-old Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information resulting in an 18-month sentence.
[70][71] In August 2016, 28-year-old Edward Majerczyk of Chicago, agreed to plead guilty to a similar phishing scheme, although authorities believe he worked independently and he was not accused of selling the images or posting them online.
[74] Emilio Herrera, also from Chicago, had first been named in the press in 2014;[66] he pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information in October 2017.
[76] In April 2018, 26-year-old George Garofano of North Branford, Connecticut, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.
