Reported Apple iCloud Hack Leaked Hundreds of Nude Celebrity Photos

Now this gonna be the height of Privacy Breach! Nude images of several high-profile persona including actors, models, singers and presenters have been made available online in a blatant hacking leak linked to the Apple iCloud service.

The recent privacy breach appears to be one of the biggest celebrity privacy breaches in history and represents a serious offense and violation of privacy. A hacker allegedly breached Apple’s iCloud service and copied the personal photos of at least 100 high-profile stars.

WHO IS BEHIND IT

The anonymous hacker, using the name Tristan, sparked the scandal on Sunday after dumping a large cache of female celebrities' alleged naked photographs onto the 4chan online forum, an online message board used for sharing pictures.

The list of those celebrities allegedly affected, whose nudes photographs are supposedly in this cache, is very long that includes Jenny McCarthy, Rihanna, Kristin Dunst, Kate Upton, the American actress Mary E Winstead, and the Oscar winning actress Jennifer Lawrence. 

As a result of the leak, the nude photographs and videos of female celebrities are apparently being widely circulated on the internet. took to the ‘deep web’ where the images are thought to have first been posted a week ago to say he had to ‘move location’.

HOW ALL THIS BEGIN

The anonymous hacker behind the leaked images scandal posted a brief statement saying that they were going to bed because "s*** was getting real."

On Sunday evening, the anonymous user began posting the nude images of dozens of celebrities on 4chan website. It is still unclear how the photographs ended up online, but the anonymous hacker may have obtained more than 423 nude images of over a 100 celebrities without their permission.

Within hours Twitter was awash with hundreds of thousands of tweets about the photographs which are also alleged to include Brits Michelle Keegan, Cara Delevigne, Cat Deeley and Kelly Brook. 

CELEBS ADMITTED - SNAPS ARE REAL

The the 24-year-old Hunger Games and X-Men actress Jennifer Lawrence icluding several others have confirmed that the leaked photographs are genuine, while some celebrities have disputed the authenticity of the images.

The superstar Jennifer Lawrence's representative previously reported that Lawrence’s photographs were stolen, calling the hacking act as “a flagrant violation of privacy.” The spokesperson also added, “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”

Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Final Destination 3 was also been victim of the hack. The actress took to Twitter to react to having her images exposed.

HOW PHOTOGRAPHS WERE OBTAINED

It is believed that the leaked photographs of high-profile celebs were apparently obtained by the hackers via a massive hack of Apple's iCloud. The nude images then posted on 4chan websites by its users offering more explicit material in exchange for bitcoin payments.

The hacker on 4chan is also claiming to have over 60 nude selfies and an explicit sex film of the Oscar-winning actress, Jennifer Lawrence, which is available for a fee in Bitcoins.

NO RESPONSE FROM APPLE

Apple has declined to comment. It has not yet confirmed that its iCloud service was involved in the alleged leak.

The encryption of Apple on general data is considered to be robust, but access to it could be gained if an attacker is able to guess a users' passwords, which can be have obtained by using ‘brute force’ attack or ‘social engineering’ trick.

An account can alternatively be easily accessed by resetting a user's account by finding their email address and then answering traditional ‘security questions.’