Imagine this—you are in the school cafeteria and you leave to buy your lunch, leaving your phone on the table. After your purchase, you are welcomed back to your seat by your peers. After hearing a few chuckles, you immediately check your phone (which seems to be a reflex nowadays.) You unlock your phone to see that your photo gallery has doubled in ‘selfies.’ Now you’ll have to waste another ten minutes of your day removing unwanted photos from your phone. Of course your friends may have been amused, but you are displeased like any other phone-owner would be. No more leaving your phone out in the open.
Déjà-vu? This familiar exasperation is known as “hacking”—the gaining of access (wanted or unwanted) to a computer, phone, or piece of technology and viewing, copying, or creating data on the said device. The phone is a personal item filled with your story through photos, videos, text messaging, music… everything. Don’t worry about losing these digital memories, though. If you have an iPhone, your information is stored in “iCloud.” Deleted your photos? They’ll just make their way into iCloud with the help of iPhone’s Photo Stream (which allows your photos to go to all your other devices—iPod, iPad, etc.) To sum it up, all of your phone’s memory is in iCloud.
Everyone’s data is all in this pool of photos and songs and texts and your whole life, perhaps secrets, too. They all belong to iCloud.
If we can’t trust our own friends, why trust a computer? Computers are strangers; we have been brought up to not trust strangers. The difference is that a computer is open to all strangers, not just one. Anyone could hack into your device at any time. This was revealed August 31, 2014, when some of your favorite celebrities’ nude photos were leaked through iCloud.
Celebrity Nude Photo Leak Through iCloud
The final day of August, 2014 . . . one of Hollywood’s most embarrassing moments. Jennifer Lawrence: actress, age 24. Ariana Grande: pop singer, age 21. Kate Upton: model, age 22. Victoria Justice: actress, age 21. These are the victims of the nude iCloud hacking scandal . . . and the list is just getting longer. Though some deny the pictures are them, such as Grande and Justice, but it remains a debatable topic by the viewers. Some of the more recent pictures, posted on September 20th, 2014, are of Rihanna, Gabrielle Union, and Amber Heard. These photos were released on 4chan, an anonymous forum site, but were soon deleted. Many of the photos can still be found on Twitter and Reddit, including one recently released video.
“I know no one will believe me,” the incognito uploader of the video says. “But I have a short Lawrence video. Is way too short, a little over 2 minutes… Anyways, if somebody wants it let me know how I can upload it anonymously (I don’t want the FBI over me, and you don’t wanna know how I got this video).” Some celebrities refuse to respond to these posts, believing it is a criminal investigation, and mere violation of privacy. Apple claims to be “taking user privacy very seriously” and are “actively investigating this report,” but iCloud’s reputation is possibly, and likely being put at risk.
How the Hack Happened
As a matter of fact, Apple may be the one to take the blame. Giving the hacker an unlimited amount of password and username guesses, the hacker could “go phishing” for these photos to his content. Phishing is a method that hackers use to get information by acting as if they are a legitimate owner of the account, photos, etc. in order to reap access to the said material. “After more than 40 hours of investigation,” Apple admits, “we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet,” Of course, the hacker couldn’t do this alone. Aside from this being a supposed multiple-month project, the hacker may have even hacked into the celebrities’ associate’s accounts to garner information to indicate their iCloud’s passwords. The true mystery is not who the hacker is, but how they did it.
On September 2, 2014, Apple tweets: “We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of the photos of certain celebrities. When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple’s engineers to discover the source. Our customers’ privacy and security are of utmost importance to us. After more of 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on usernames, passwords, and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find My iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.” Did the hacker really use iCloud to acquire these photos? Or was it through something else? But most importantly—when will we, or will we find out at all? “None of the cases we have investigated have resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.”