By now you must have heard of the massive celebrity nude photos leak that happened over the weekend. Compromising photos of many well known celebrities were leaked online in a blatant disregard for privacy and the law. It was widely speculated initially that the leak happened due to an iCloud breach that hackers had exploited. Apple did acknowledge that it was investigating the matter. It has issued a statement just now issuing a clean chit to iCloud and Find My iPhone.
In its statement Apple says that it was “outraged” when it learned of the theft and immediately tasked engineers to find out the source of this leak. After claiming to have put in 40 hours of investigation Apple says that it has discovered this leak was caused by “a very targeted attack” on usernames, security questions and passwords.
This was also believed to be one of the possibilities when news of the leak broke over the weekend. Its a rather common practice on the internet to break into someone’s account by trying to guess credentials like passwords or security questions. Since celebrities often have a lot of stuff out in the open about their personal and professional lives, its not uncommon for hackers to try and guess their way into an account.
According to Apple all of the cases that it has investigated had not resulted from an iCloud or Find My iPhone breach. However the company does say that it will continue to work with law enforcement to find out the criminals who are involved in this.
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