Hacking Bloggers

From August 31, 2014 to October 27, 2014, a collection of nearly 500 sexually explicit private photos and videos were posted online by an anonymous group that called themselves "collectors". The majority of these photos and videos were stolen sexts from over 100 female celebrities. These photos and videos showed the women topless, naked, and/or performing sexual acts. They were first posted on the imageboard 4chan, and then swiftly disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. Internet users and media respondents termed the phenomenon "Celebgate" or, more popularly, "The Fappening". The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud, or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts with guessing victims' passwords. Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks. The incident was met with varied reactions from the media and fellow celebrities. Critics argued the leak was a major invasion of privacy for the photos' subjects, while some of the alleged subjects denied the images' authenticity. 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.