Celebrity Photo Leak (Nothing inappropriate in here)

So I was reading how these 100 female celebrities had their inappropriate photos stolen and leaked to the internet. The place where things go to live in perpetuity.

TechCrunch, as usual, is covering Apple's but saying there is no possible way that its iCloud. They even went to say far to say not to worry about it being hacked. Sophos reported that it supposedly happened through iCloud, but Apple has yet to issue a statement.

At least Jennifer Lawrence's photos were confirmed to be real by her stating she wants to prosecute whoever did this, and rightfully so.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think it was in iCloud breach, or something else?

Also, am I the only one who thinks its stupid to take nude photos on any sort of device, besides an old school polaroid camera, is stupid?

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Comments

Vask3n

I still find it interesting that even though Apple claims that this has nothing to do with Find my iPhone, this is the exact app that they patched right when the leaks started.

"Apple also says that Find my iPhone was not involved in the photo thefts. "
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6098107/apple-denies-icloud-breach-celebrity-nude-photo-hack/in/5863348

CCNTrainee

Backup your life on the "Cloud"... Lol

DevilWAH

the_Grinch wrote: »

I've never quite understood peoples obsession with sending naked pictures to others. It never ends well and you can find unlimited number of stories pointing to that fact.

I think this is a bit of a case of "you only read about it when it goes wrong", I also think calling it an obsession is wrong. I mean yes it could be come an obsession if its all some one ever things about, but other wise its just some thing private between two people. Remember also that celebrities often due to work have to spend time a lot away from there partners. The sex lives are their own business, if taking pictures make them happy good on them, I can guarantee there are people reading this who have done it.

I can see some enterprising person creating a service for this now, for celebrities to anonymously and securely exchange photos.

tprice5

MTciscoguy wrote: »

If they want to take nude images of themselves, they deserve what they get, if they feel the need to take images, then do it with a device that is not connected and keep the storage card in a safe place, taking them on a connected devices is just asking for trouble, or perhaps publicity, who knows.

I mean no disrespect but the older generation is the only group that consistently shock me. They have a nack for being especially offensive in their own unique way, though, it's usually related to racism, or anti-homosexual (g*y gets censored out lulz) issues. I don't want to spin up a politcal discussion, just wanted to voice that this legitimately pissed me off

DevilWAH wrote: »

if taking pictures make them happy good on them, I can guarantee there are people reading this who have done it.

This. Tpatt100 and Iris pretty much summed up how I feel about it. What used to be a fringe market for ephemeral messaging now looks to be an area of growth, see snapchat and Microsoft's WindUp

tpatt100

I thought Dropbox was always having security issues that was due to just bad administration mistakes like when the service didn't require a password that was quickly corrected.

MTciscoguy

tprice5 wrote: »

I mean no disrespect but the older generation is the only group that consistently shock me. They have a nack for being especially offensive in their own unique way, though, it's usually related to racism, or anti-homosexual (g*y gets censored out lulz) issues. I don't want to spin up a politcal discussion, just wanted to voice that this legitimately pissed me off

This is probably where most of the disagreement on this issue comes from, the generational differences.

I also agree, there could be an emerging market here for those developers interested in coming up with a secure format for those who wish to share this type of data.

At this point in time, I worry far more about the data breaches at the credit card companies, such as the possible large breach announced this morning of Home Depot customers!

Params7

I can imagine some IT directors or sales reps using this incident to back off from cloud migrations.

tpatt100

MTciscoguy wrote: »

This is probably where most of the disagreement on this issue comes from, the generational differences.

I also agree, there could be an emerging market here for those developers interested in coming up with a secure format for those who wish to share this type of data.

At this point in time, I worry far more about the data breaches at the credit card companies, such as the possible large breach announced this morning of Home Depot customers!

I regularly read KrebsOnSecurity blog and I lost track of the number of data breaches the past year or two.....

the_Grinch

When I say obsession I mean the sexting and the selfies this younger generation loves to take. There have been a number of studies that speak to this point. I do see your point about being away from your significant other from a period of time (I'm single so often points like that are lost on me). More then likely it's the IT/Security guy in me that cringes at the thought of having anything compromising that can be held. The other issue that no one brings up is that they pointed out that the one actress might have been underage at the time. Technically, she and the person she sent the pictures to could be charge with a number of crimes.

tpatt100

It's always existed it's just that digital media made it easier, more accessible. Back when I was in the Marines guys were always getting sexy photos of their girlfriends/wives it was just harder to do because photo development usually required a third party. I didn't get the point of the photos because often I really don't want to see your wife in lingerie and I doubt she thought her husband would pass the photo around either....

Now the removal of third party photo development something that always existed went mainstream. I have "selfies" of my friends and I it's just so easy to take and doesn't cost any money to get them developed and share that makes the frequency increase so much.

Most people have embarrassing stuff in their home "somewhere" which brought about the idea of somebody that goes in and performs a "sweep of your home" to clear out embarrassing stuff when you die.

The thing is this is about "s-l-ut shaming" plain and simple, it's a culture of people who are angry at women in general which brought up the idea of "revenge pron". Your spouse hurts you and leaves you so you get revenge by spilling out all the personal stuff to embarrass her, which in my eyes all you do is warn other people that dating you is a really bad idea.

MTciscoguy

Boy I am glad I have been married for almost 30 years! One thing I can honestly say, is we have never taken compromising images of each other, if we had and we got caught, I would have lost my commission in the Military!

DevilWAH

tpatt100 wrote: »

The thing is this is about "s-l-ut shaming" plain and simple, it's a culture of people who are angry at women in general which brought up the idea of "revenge pron". Your spouse hurts you and leaves you so you get revenge by spilling out all the personal stuff to embarrass her, which in my eyes all you do is warn other people that dating you is a really bad idea.

Hold on what happened here is very different to "revenge shaming".

No one who legitimately had access to these pictures posted them publicly, which is the case with the revenge cases. These photos where stolen by a third party and released. No one is angry at these women and wanted to shame them. The people who did this just wanted to "get off" on naked pictures. Now you can argue the morality of **** till the cows come home, but most men who look at P0£n are not angry at women. Indeed most are not even sexually frustrated and not all are even men.

Yes of course there is a dark side to the ****/sex industry, but then there is a dark side to the IT industry so that's nothing new. I don't know where you come from but there is no a "Culture of people that are angry at women in general". There is a minority of people who are, but the way I see it. "the majority of people are good... not great just good". And its true as the average guy in the street if he is angry at women and he will say no, and indeed most of us men treat women with respect in the same way we treat other men.

ccnxjr

tprice5 wrote: »

This. Tpatt100 and Iris pretty much summed up how I feel about it. What used to be a fringe market for ephemeral messaging now looks to be an area of growth, see snapchat and Microsoft's WindUp

Snapchat has the worst security of them all!!!

A Snapchat security breach affects 4.6 million users. Did Snapchat drag its feet on a fix? - The Washington Post

Worse that the breach itself was how they handled it.

DrB1986

tprice5 wrote: »

I mean no disrespect but the older generation is the only group that consistently shock me. They have a nack for being especially offensive in their own unique way, though, it's usually related to racism, or anti-homosexual (g*y gets censored out lulz) issues. I don't want to spin up a politcal discussion, just wanted to voice that this legitimately pissed me off

This. Tpatt100 and Iris pretty much summed up how I feel about it. What used to be a fringe market for ephemeral messaging now looks to be an area of growth, see snapchat and Microsoft's WindUp

@Tpatt100

I do want to throw my .02 cents in on this from my point of view,

I do not like to generalize however I must say I do agree with what you said, and while I do have my own beliefs on certain things ( the g** word), individuals in the old generations do tend to on average from what I see to be very vocal to the point of offensive on whatever some do not like such as gaming, violence on tv, sex, ethnic issues, gender issues, homosexuality, even mixed marriages plus technology lol which is sad. I do realize that the old folks ( boomers and below) grew up during a time were things were a lot different and segregated and possess that old school herd mentality, and its hard to shake off what society and government taught individuals during that time which is why I try my hardest not to get pissed at them, but I will admit it is hard not to sometimes lol.

- Again just my .02 cents not looking for a flame war here

tpatt100

DevilWAH wrote: »

Hold on what happened here is very different to "revenge shaming".

No one who legitimately had access to these pictures posted them publicly, which is the case with the revenge cases. These photos where stolen by a third party and released. No one is angry at these women and wanted to shame them. The people who did this just wanted to "get off" on naked pictures. Now you can argue the morality of **** till the cows come home, but most men who look at P0£n are not angry at women. Indeed most are not even sexually frustrated and not all are even men.

Yes of course there is a dark side to the ****/sex industry, but then there is a dark side to the IT industry so that's nothing new. I don't know where you come from but there is no a "Culture of people that are angry at women in general". There is a minority of people who are, but the way I see it. "the majority of people are good... not great just good". And its true as the average guy in the street if he is angry at women and he will say no, and indeed most of us men treat women with respect in the same way we treat other men.

It's a sub culture of people is what I am referring to and when I see responses in general not here specifically there is a trend of "shaming" involved when you see responses that somebody deserves it. It's similar to responses even when pictures are taken with consent but later used to shame of "don't take them if you don't want it to come back and haunt you".

With this in mind, it’s unlikely that the hacker—or hackers—are actually seeking fame or even necessarily money by engaging in this practice. (Which would likely expose them to civil lawsuits or criminal penalties anyway.) Instead, this violation gives us a peek into a sick but thriving subculture, or really series of subcultures, of men who are excited by the idea of violating a woman against her will and who get together in online spaces to swap ideas on how to do this, tell bragging stories about violating women, and sharing the photographic evidence of their violations. They’re doing this not for fame or fortune, but because they loathe women and want to use sex and sexuality to hurt and punish women, often just for existing.

David Futrelle, who chronicles the alarming spread of misogyny online at his blog We Hunted The Mammoth, wrote about the whole photo **** debacle on Monday. If just seeing sexy pictures is what you want, he points out, you have “the mind-bogglingly enormous selection of women out there who have agreed to pose naked, or even perform explicit sex acts, on camera.” Indeed, your average celebrity nude selfie is downright tame compared to any random pornographic picture you can find online. In fact, there are plenty of already-famous women who have their nude images out there, if fame is your thing. So it is “not the celebrity of the women in question” motivating the theft of these photos, “but from the violation of privacy that these pictures represent.”

Vask3n

DrB1986 wrote: »

@Tpatt100

I do want to throw my .02 cents in on this from my point of view,

- Again just my .02 cents not looking for a flame war here

Not to be a jerk but since you used this expression twice, .02 cents != 2 cents.

You just threw .04 cents at us which is less than one cent.

DrB1986

Vask3n wrote: »

Not to be a jerk but since you used this expression twice, .02 cents != 2 cents.

You just threw .04 cents at us which is less than one cent.

Fair enough, thanks for pointing that out. Though this is a forum I try to use what my English teachers taught me so I wont seem like a low intelligent individual but I make mistakes every now and then.

MTciscoguy

LOL, I am probably one of the worst of the older Generation for my beliefs, I was raised in the 60's, trained in the Military Academy, graduated and retired as on O-6 Full Bird. That said, being in the computer field, I do understand things are changing, I have all of the little gizmos and gadgets that go along with the newer technologies and have always been fascinated by technology.

Again, I believe the most important person concerning your security is you, I was raised to take responsibility for your actions, I don't care if people take pictures of themselves or their partners, just do it in a manner that does not expose you to the risk of embarrassment or liability of exposure. I also don't agree with these companies now a days, that come up with TOS agreements that entitle them to keep your information if you stop using their services. I don't agree with the NSA and their information gathering activities, and I actually worked with the agency for a number of years, I was vocal against it then and I am vocal against it now!

I believe far to much of our information is out there for the world to see and I would love to capture some of these hackers and put them to the test, they would not like the ringer I put them through!

DrB1986

MTciscoguy wrote: »

LOL, I am probably one of the worst of the older Generation for my beliefs, I was raised in the 60's, trained in the Military Academy, graduated and retired as on O-6 Full Bird. That said, being in the computer field, I do understand things are changing, I have all of the little gizmos and gadgets that go along with the newer technologies and have always been fascinated by technology.

Again, I believe the most important person concerning your security is you, I was raised to take responsibility for your actions, I don't care if people take pictures of themselves or their partners, just do it in a manner that does not expose you to the risk of embarrassment or liability of exposure. I also don't agree with these companies now a days, that come up with TOS agreements that entitle them to keep your information if you stop using their services. I don't agree with the NSA and their information gathering activities, and I actually worked with the agency for a number of years, I was vocal against it then and I am vocal against it now!

I believe far to much of our information is out there for the world to see and I would love to capture some of these hackers and put them to the test, they would not like the ringer I put them through!

I'm 28 years old and I do have to agree with you, these days it is best to mind your own security both network and physical the best way you know how for it is the world we live in, also as a person that is starting to get into networking and some security, I was taught that when a device is connected to the network assume your device is not 100% secure and you have no privacy which in this case your cell phone, however if I can just point out that these people affected were victims and regardless of their tech shortcomings does not in any way justify taking their photos without their permission but should at the same time learn from this as well for I think this is a lesson for us all in what not to do.

tpatt100

Again, I believe the most important person concerning your security is you, I was raised to take responsibility for your actions, I don't care if people take pictures of themselves or their partners, just do it in a manner that does not expose you to the risk of embarrassment or liability of exposure.

Somebody taking pictures of themselves isn't doing anything that they need to take "responsibility" for. It's still victim blaming because the people that need to take any responsibility are the people who unlawfully violated somebody's privacy by taking something without consent.

It seems we are still stuck on "nude photos are bad or embarrassing" where the whole point is it doesn't matter what the files are, something wrong was done by strangers without consent of the file owner. It could be your kid's first drawing from school you hang up on your refrigerator and somebody steals it for whatever reason.

We had our home broken into a few years ago and the thieves were probably a bunch of dumb kids because they didn't steal anything valuable but our stuff was obviously rummaged through, drawers left open, lights on, closets open with the lights on, etc. It's the violation of my privacy that mattered to me, strangers going through my stuff without my consent.

MTciscoguy

tpratt, I am not blaming them, I am simply saying, we know people are going to do these things and should protect ourselves from bad peoples actions, telling someone to be proactive about their security is not blaming them, it is educating them, we are an informed society knowing that bad things do happen. Being a determined person to not be a victim is not a bad thing. We know bad people are out there, taking pictures is not the problem, having pictures that can be compromised by others is the problem.. You are naive if you believe people who do bad things should take responsibility, they are criminals, they don't take responsibility for their illegal actions, that is why there are court systems and laws so society can force them to take responsibility. If the criminals would take responsibility for their bad acts, we wouldn't need cops, lawyers or judges!

Claymoore

tpatt100 wrote: »

It's the violation of my privacy that mattered to me, strangers going through my stuff without my consent.

I'm offended that you are upset about your privacy being violated. If you didn't want your house broken into, you shouldn't have a a house. Or anything that might have value that someone might want to take. If you are selfish enough to want a house and present the illusion that you have nice things someone might want, it's your responsibility to install doors. And locks. And a security system. And armed guards on duty at all times. It's your fault your house was broken into, not the alleged thief. You should take responsibility for your actions.

DrB1986

I think the moral of the story for this case is CYA ( Cover yo a**) correct me if I am wrong lol.

tpatt100

"Everything" is open to the possibility of being compromised, the only thing that matters is the amount of work/determination by the criminal which is why they are the only ones responsible. We are basically telling people to not be themselves or acquire things so nothing of value is available that somebody else will want/desire.

The reason I quoted the article I read was that these nude pictures being stolen have little to do with "nude pictures" but more about the ability to get the files because they are personal, the fact they are nude pictures of famous people increases the value to everybody else who wants to download them but lack the ability or nerve to steal them themselves.

If somebody sneaks up to a house and records somebody having sex and posts it online, I don't tell them to go have sex in an underground bunker. There is a reasonable amount of privacy people generally expect and laws are for the people who violate that privacy.

stryder144

You know, I deal with non-technical people all the time regarding security issues and general computer issues. When explained in a way that makes sense, they get it and they become better users and smaller targets. I think that those who design and implement software solutions, be it security, drivers, software installation routines, etc, should keep in mind the capabilities of the average user. An example of what I mean, a project that gets it, is Bastille Hardening project. It explains what it is trying to do and what your options are. If Apple, MS, etc would implement such procedures, I am certain that there would be fewer incidents of user ignorance leading to embarrassment like this situation.

MTciscoguy

tpatt100 wrote: »

If somebody sneaks up to a house and records somebody having sex and posts it online, I don't tell them to go have sex in an underground bunker. There is a reasonable amount of privacy people generally expect and laws are for the people who violate that privacy.

I would hope, that they would have at least closed the window shades! Proactive vs Reactive is always going to be the best course of action. Despite there being laws, there is always going to be someone willing to break those laws and we need to be proactive is stopping them.

MTciscoguy

stryder144 wrote: »

If Apple, MS, etc would implement such procedures, I am certain that there would be fewer incidents of user ignorance leading to embarrassment like this situation.

I agree 100%, but as we have seen for the last couple of decades, they are not doing it and I doubt they ever will!

stryder144

MTciscoguy...sadly, I believe they never will as well.

datacomboss

MTciscoguy wrote: »

I agree 100%, but as we have seen for the last couple of decades, they are not doing it and I doubt they ever will!

Of course not, it's about "driving stakeholder value" and other bullsh.

It's not the fault of the victims, but we all have to live in the real world where things aren't "fair" or "right" so we have to be aware and protect ourselves as much as possible. Personal branding is everything in the entertainment business and there have been too many related incidents for the victims to be so naive.

MagnumOpus

Simply put, I carry my wallet in my front pocket to reduce the chances of theft, I lock the doors (often double check) of my home, cars and etc as a preventive and security measure. As stated previously, there are steps an individual can take to reduce risk and there are situations where the risk is accepted (acceptable risk). Uploading your nudes to an cloud server is simply poor risk management. It seems to me that these celebrities accepted this risk as soon as they snapped the picture. Of course it's not their fault they were exploited, it was simply poor judgement on their part. I'm quite sure an employee managing the cloud service more than likely seen these photos prior to the exploit, once the client signed over their rights (TOS).

Regardless, somebody is looking at your most intimate photos and if you are bothered by that thought, then don't upload your data to a cloud service. We're slowly evolving into a generation of risk ignorance and it simply frightens me. It's illegal to leave your car running unattended and if its stolen, both parties are at at fault. It's a crazy world we live in, and just by taking a second to use a little bit of your common sense could save you from those future headaches.

Carl Sagan said it best:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8O1e_TZHZo