Celebrity smartphones/Apple I-Cloud hack of August 2014

[Frits]

Did not one of these girls watch the movie 'Sex Tape'?

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by Frits

Did not one of these girls watch the movie 'Sex Tape'?

Did anyone?

[John C. Holmes]

Originally Posted by DTravel

Did anyone?

I think they were too busy thinking that they could parlay naked selfies into a Kim Kardashian empire.

[fordprefect739]

From what I've been reading, the only evidence that this was a hack to iCloud was the fact that a lot of the pictures had information in them indicating that they were taken with iPhones. That doesn't mean that it was an iCloud hack. It could have been, but that evidence is circumstantial at best.

Apple denies that iCloud was hacked. They're saying it was individual accounts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/09/02/apple-admits-celebrity-photos-were-stolen-in-targeted-hack/

[fordprefect739]

Originally Posted by scottx

Server sites hosting the pics are already removing them, even thought they are public domain now.

They are not in the public domain. That means something different than you think it means.

Public domain means that it's owned by the public, or nobody depending upon how you want to look at it. These images are still owned by the people who made them. One of the legal means that they have is sending copyright infringement notices to hosting sites. Those don't work with public domain.

They have, however, escaped into the web and are stored on the hard drives of many thousands, possibly even millions of computers. They will likely circulate forever. Once data escapes to the web like that, it pretty much can't be deleted.

People who share the pics will likely do it person to person rather than mass posts, since mass posts will tend to get traced.

[SquidMann]

Originally Posted by Norman Stanley Fletcher

Why would they hoard nude pics? To increase their trading value, keep it within a small circle of fellow hackers and trade accordingly... I appreciate that goes against everything VEF holds dear and that's why, if it's true, I think it sucks

But sir, in my opinion, those gals might or might not be as popular as they are now. Could because of these leaked pics, destroyed their career or even rise even higher like those in Kim Kardashian or Tila Tequila case. So what I want to tell you is, whoever hoard (or holding) these nude pics really doing a job of a speculant, it's likely as gambling, the amount of the value depends on the celeb's career fate. And I'm thinkin there's more than the intent of increasing their trading value (which is including ''but not limited to'') What if the celeb's career ended over time while the photos (like one of Elizabeth Taylor's) has not been sold yet? They'll get less for the picture they're strugglin to get.. I'm sorry for my bad english

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by fordprefect739

From what I've been reading, the only evidence that this was a hack to iCloud was the fact that a lot of the pictures had information in them indicating that they were taken with iPhones. That doesn't mean that it was an iCloud hack. It could have been, but that evidence is circumstantial at best.

Apple denies that iCloud was hacked. They're saying it was individual accounts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/09/02/apple-admits-celebrity-photos-were-stolen-in-targeted-hack/

Apple is specifically excluding "remotely hacking someone's iPhone and using it to access iCloud" from actions that constitute "hacking iCloud".

[Norman Stanley Fletcher]

Originally Posted by SquidMann

But sir, in my opinion, those gals might or might not be as popular as they are now. Could because of these leaked pics, destroyed their career or even rise even higher like those in Kim Kardashian or Tila Tequila case. So what I want to tell you is, whoever hoard (or holding) these nude pics really doing a job of a speculant, it's likely as gambling, the amount of the value depends on the celeb's career fate. And I'm thinkin there's more than the intent of increasing their trading value (which is including ''but not limited to'') What if the celeb's career ended over time while the photos (like one of Elizabeth Taylor's) has not been sold yet? They'll get less for the picture they're strugglin to get.. I'm sorry for my bad english

I'm not putting forward my opinion I'm putting forward what is being reported in some sections, I can't answer for the way these particular hackers and traders minds and methods work I only threw this angle in because I found it interesting and because I was finding the established view of what happened overly-simplistic. The assumption that whether a single person or a group of people hacked these photos because they 1) were striking a blow for freedom 2) got lucky because the starlets left these things 'out' like a cooling pie on a window sill or 3) they did what they did to help out their fellow wankers and peepers doesn't seem so credible if the alternative report of how these pictures came to be released has a crumb of truth to it.

If it has.

And referring back to a previous poster, this is, I hope, a forum where contrasting ideas and opinions can be shared, none of us have an exclusive handle on the truth or fact and I'll leave it to the people who run the board to tell me whether I can post here or not. I'm not second guessing what the hackers motives or methods were, I'm just sharing what other people within the hacker and collector communities have said in light of this story; which seems to be a different story to the one being reported more widely, but that seems to be being accepted here with only very few exceptions.

[Sam Spade]

Jules & Vincent's take on the story

[ConstantOgler]

I'm no maven on this, but seems to me many indications there are two levels here. One is where the original material was scarfed into a collection, probably over a long period and by penetration of accounts. Not the cloud but very possibly an "inside job", and ongoing one. By inside I don't mean data host, necessarily, but any agency or company that has private info. The accumulator was not sharing or trading, obviously, cuz discovery puts an end to it.
JMO this also explains fakes, woven in by the accumulator cuz he was not making a show for purists, just adding things he liked that fit.
At level two, what we have now, it all gets published, for whatever reason; possibly contrary to the wishes of the accumulator, or maybe not.