iCloud Hacker Pleads Guilty To Phishing Scheme

A couple of years ago, you might recall that Apple’s iCloud was compromised and private photos belonging to many celebrities were downloaded and published online. According to a recent report from NBC News, it seems that a Pennsylvania man has since been charged in the hacking and has also pleaded guilty to a phishing scheme.

We should point out that Apple’s iCloud was never “hacked”, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead the man in question, 36-year old Ryan Collins, launched a phishing scheme in which he managed to get his victims to unknowingly hand over their username and passwords under the pretense that he was from Apple and/or Google.

By using the login information, Collins then managed to access their accounts, and in turn downloaded private photos and information from these accounts, many of which have since been published online in what many are referring to as “The Fappening”.

David Bowdich, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office released a statement which reads, “By illegally accessing intimate details of his victims’ personal lives, Mr. Collins violated their privacy and left many to contend with lasting emotional distress, embarrassment and feelings of insecurity.”

Following the leaked photos, Apple made some improvements to the security of iCloud by introducing and making it easier for users to enable two-factor authentication, in which a one-time generated code is used to verify the user in addition to their username and password.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple
Tags: Hack, icloud, Security