Apple & FBI Investigating Mass Leak Of Stolen Nude Celebrity Photos
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(Ninja M.)
It’s believed that the images were stolen by exploiting a glitch in Apple’s Find My iPhone service for people looking to track or shut down their lost devices. Normally, an iPhone user’s account would be locked out after a few failed password attempts, but the glitch allowed a remote hacker to run through multiple passwords until finding the one that unlocked the account. From there, it was apparently just a matter of grabbing the digital loot.
Apple isn’t saying much, other than issuing a statement that, “We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report.”
However, the Wall Street Journal notes that the original GitHub post describing the iCloud exploit was updated on Monday to read, “The end of fun, Apple have just patched.”
Meanwhile, the FBI tells the Associated Press that the agency is “aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter.”
Reps for some of the celebrities involved in this breach said the victims had removed photos from their phones long before and did not know that these photos still existed on iCloud, or that files were being automatically backed up in this way.
The auto-uploading of images to iCloud can be disabled by going to the settings menu on your iPhone or iPad, selecting “iCloud,” then the “Photos” option and switching off My Photo Stream and Photo Sharing.
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