iCloud Comes Under Fire Again As More Celebrity Nudes Leak

A few weeks back a major cache of celebrity nude pictures was leaked online. It was believed initially that iCloud was to be blamed. Apple conducted an investigation and found no direct breach of iCloud system. Instead it concluded that celebrities’ accounts were deliberately targeted by hackers. At the time iCloud did not have two-step authentication. Yesterday a fresh cache of pictures were leaked online and once again the widespread assumption is that this is the result of an iCloud breach.

When the first batch was circulated online a man who claimed to be hacker said that this operation took several months of planning. It was also said that a Python script may have been used to launch brute force attacks against celebrities’ accounts. In a brute force attack passwords are repeatedly guessed until one lands on the correct password and access is gained, this can be automated by using scripts.

It has not been determined up till now if the latest batch of photos are the result of a recent hack or if they have only surfaced online now and had already been illegally obtained in the past. After the whole debacle a few weeks back Apple vowed to increase iCloud security and has now switched on two-step authentication.

So far Apple has not commented if its looking into the hack and trying to determine once again if there’s been a breach in iCloud systems. For all we know it may only remain an assumption that iCloud is directly to be blamed in the latest leak.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Apple
Tags: icloud