iCloud fiasco: 100 FAMOUS WOMEN exposed NUDE online

Naked photos of celebrities including Sports Illustrated model Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence and Ariana Grande have been published online by an anonymous hacker who reportedly obtained the explicit pics from the victims' Apple iCloud accounts. Nude photos of 17 celebrities have been published online. The anonymous hacker …

[Anonymous Coward]

"Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

Well I guess they really weren't deleted then.

[Salts]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

Just goes to show, people with a lot of money are not as clever as they think :-)

Agent, got a part for you and need a Pic of your tits

Star, oh got loads of them, bit busy doing star things, can I share it with you on my very secure cloud thingy.

Agent, sounds great, email me the details, but make sure you delete it later.

Star, Oh, well of course, (eyebrows narrow, in deep thought), exit stage left ....

[Andrew Jones 2]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

The downsides of CDN.

Facebook has the same issue - when you delete something it's not really gone, it's just the pointer to it that has been deleted - but anyone with the direct URL can still load it.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

"Facebook has the same issue - when you delete something it's not really gone, it's just the pointer to it that has been deleted - but anyone with the direct URL can still load it."

Not true. The raw URL can be used to get around permissions, but when a photo on facebook is deleted, the request is batched out to the CDNs. Obviously it's not as instant as the apparent deletion on the HTML side of things (and facebook did once get into a bit of hot water for not flushing the CSN's in a timely manner), but it is done.

Apart from the legal ramifications, why on earth would they want to waste storage on a photo that will never be shown again on a 'proper' page with commercials and sponsored links?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also backups to consider..

Any outfit worth its money will run a rotating backup resource. This is not really for the benefit of individual users but more for service disaster recovery, but the fact remains that "deleted" doesn't equate to "irretrievably gone" until the data has rotated out of the backup scheme.

In addition, I would like to point out that some countries have mandatory retention requirements - a "delete" there could merely mean "accessible to everyone who pretends to be an official, but not to the hoi polloi unless they have medium level hacking skills"

Last but not least, certain outfits give themselves rights into perpetuity to help themselves to your content the moment you store it with them. The excuses vary, but the consequences of that can be that a delete is only a change of access control. Just in case they need to, umm, "convince" you - more likely if you are of the politically engaged persuasion.

In a nutshell, you better think very, VERY carefully before you hand off personal data to 3rd parties, whoever they are.

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be very relevant..

When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give us (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services

That implies that what you delete is not deleted, otherwise they could not claim later rights. QED.

(this, btw, is taken from Google - I took the identifier out because I use this often in presentations. It gets interesting reactions when people realise just what they have agreed to when using Googleb services).

[Kiwi]

Re: This may be very relevant..

(this, btw, is taken from Google - I took the identifier out because I use this often in presentations. It gets interesting reactions when people realise just what they have agreed to when using Googleb services).

When starting to build the online presence for our company we had a look at such licenses (thankfully I had an inkling we'd see this and worse from FB, LI etc).

Even then I was somewhat shocked at how bad Google is, so our G+ page has had little work. I refuse to put our logo or other graphics on there because of this license. Might pinch their streetview photo for a picture of the shop front (let them steal their own IP) but anything I value? No.

LI is worse than Google - not only does it have much the same license, but you have to wade through a hell of a lot more text to reach it. And IIRC it's not in the area you'd expect to find it (so any company who has a logo on Linked In - guess what, you don't own the rights to your logo any more, you've given them an eternal to use it in any way they want, to make derivatives of it, to sell your logo or any derivatives and so on, you've lost control of it).

I was shocked and very pleasantly surprised to see that FB promise that anything you delete is deleted (with a caveat that it may linger in backups for a few weeks but will be deleted in due course and not human-reachable). Their licensing basically reads (at least when we put our logo and other artworks there, hope they haven't changed) that you have full rights over your work, but you give them a license to modify it for the purpose of displaying it in the manner you allow, and only for so long as you have an account with them.

(Note : Not a farcebook user (that's entirely the business partner's job!), nor a fan or supporter of FB. The less people on it the better.. Though it does take attention away from the more interesting places out there...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

Her remark was interesting. How do clouds deal with deleted files?

[Nextweek]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

If you ran a de-dupe data store, why would you ever delete data?

Mark it as deleted, if a user attempts to upload the same file you can just flag back instantly and say done and unmark it. Data storage is cheap, I/O is not. Its a waste of resources to write zeros to a disk if you are not specifically required to.

[Ruairi]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

By "cloud" I assume you mean CDN, and if that's the case - there's two operations a CDN needs to do to be considered a CDN - load content onto the CDN, and invalidate assets at the edge.

Same goes for "cloud" - reclaiming freed up storage actually makes financial sense at scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

"How do clouds deal with deleted files?"

If they had only saved the photos as a spreadsheet and stored them in OneDrive...

[Magnus_Pym]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

OR they could have been stolen a long time ago. Before they were deleted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Accident

Unless you are a forensic scientist it is pretty much impossible to recover a deleted photograph directly from iPad 3's onwards and iPhone 5 onwards, unless it has been backed up either in the cloud or iTunes.

Other information can be recovered but not photos.

[SineWave242]

Re: Accident

Send me your iPhone with deleted pictures, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Knowing these photos were deleted a long time ago"

It's this sort of technological ignorance that is a gift to the NSA and others.

[Captain DaFt]

Trust your data to the cloud they said

It'll be safe and convenient they said.

[Steven Roper]

Yes.

This is exactly the kind of scandal that is needed to wake people up to the hazards and dangers of relying on cloud storage. It is NOT secure and never will be, no matter how much buzzword fluff the marketing droids and three-letter-spooks throw around. As to all those who brush off their reliance on cloud with "I have nothing to hide, so nothing to fear" - you fucking well have plenty to fear now!

[big_D]

Re: Yes.

I've never understood, why they would upload such photos onto an online service in the first place. Surely these are personal and private photos? They have no reason to be on an online service, if they are supposed to be private, don't store them in public.

It seems stars have always had nude photos of themselves and sometimes they were stolen from their homes, but now it seems they are getting more and more lax about their security.

That said, it doesn't excuse the abhorrent hacking of their accounts and publishing thr photos.

[Andrew Jones 2]

Re: Yes.

I think what happened is they took the photos using their iPhones and it automatically backs up the "camera roll" to iCloud?

I'm not an Apple user - so I can't be certain - but I think that's how it works.

[big_D]

Re: Yes.

Stupid is as stupid does...

[elDog]

Re: Yes.

Don't understand your downvotes. This is exactly what is happening. Ask any fricking "star" to explain what happens when they click the "selfie" button.

[ceayers]

Re: Yes.

Well Apple have run enough adverts stating that pictures taken with an Iphone appear instantly on your mac book / ipad - so they must be stored on the icloud in order to appear on other devices.

[phil dude]

Re: Yes.

And on android too apparently (TF101 stuck with whatever version ASUS left it at - those in the know please inform us if this is still default).

Be careful which slot you stick that SD card...!

(oo err?)

P.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

Thanks @big_D for informing us on how you think things work ..... for one particular service, which you don't use.

Any particular thoughts on quantum mechanics?

[Tim Almond]

Re: Yes.

I don't know about iPhones, but it sounds like the celebs just went with iCloud, which means as they're mailing stuff around, it's staying up on their "cloud" account.

Seriously, don't these people have *people* to tell them not to do that sort of thing? I wouldn't expect JLaw to know about the difference between iCloud, IMAP and POP3, but surely they have someone that does things like securing their wifi for them?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Yes.

>don't these people have *people* to tell them not to do that sort of thing?

They have people to tell them to do precisely this sort of thing.

Had anyone heard of Luton Travellodge, or whatever her name is, before the home video leak ?

[Brian Davies]

Re: Yes.

"...Luton Travellodge..."

Hehehehe! Very good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

A British woman judge has had criticism for pointing out that if women get very drunk, the laws of evidence then make successful prosecutions for rape (where there is no physical harm) almost impossible, because "I can't remember what happened but I think I was raped" isn't terribly convincing in court. It's the criticism that amazes me, but it is clear that for a significant number of people nowadays, saying "if you do foolish things bad things may happen" is Nanny Statism, denial of rights and Bad.

In this case one foolish thing is (assuming you really needed to take the pictures anyway) letting them out of your control because, what could possibly go wrong? And the other foolish thing is cloud services that don't warn people of the possible consequences of storing unencrypted data. To say this is not to excuse criminals, just to point out that attempts to make everybody law abiding haven't met with success at least since Hammurabi had his tablets written, so it is unwise to assume that being in the 21st century has suddenly made everybody good.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Yes.

"A British woman judge has had criticism for pointing out that if women get very drunk, the laws of evidence then make successful prosecutions for rape (where there is no physical harm) almost impossible, because "I can't remember what happened but I think I was raped" isn't terribly convincing in court. "

Although a bit OT here, the latest "scandal" is that many "no crime" rape reports are being re-opened because if the girl was that drunk then consent was impossible so it "must" be rape. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[YetAnotherLocksmith]

Re: Yes.

[quote]

Although a bit OT here, the latest "scandal" is that many "no crime" rape reports are being re-opened because if the girl was that drunk then consent was impossible so it "must" be rape. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[/quote]

And yet Rochdale still happened. One case had two detailed rape reports by a 15 year old, plus 2 sets of DNA tying the two perps to the "crime scene" and that wasn't taken to court as she "was 15 and a girl and so unreliable as a witness"!

The CPS and the police need to sort out what the rules actually are. Hint: The girl has to be both capable of consent and have given consent. (Yes, I know that's very complicated.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

Unfortuantely a lot of people don't appear to be in blackout to people around them. As a recovered alcoholic I can confirm that many's the time I have been so wasted as to not remember what I'd been doing for a whole week on an alcoholic binge but people I was around at the time have later told me that I was acting fairly "normally".

[Tom 38]

Re: Yes.

…if the girl was that drunk then consent was impossible so it "must" be rape

On one hand, too drunk to give consent is rape. On the other hand, too drunk to remember drunkenly giving consent is not rape. On the third hand, drunk enough to want to sleep with him, but sobers up quickly is definitely not rape. Tricky to distinguish between the three.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

> In this case one foolish thing is (assuming you really needed to take the pictures anyway) letting them out of your control because, what could possibly go wrong?

To be fair, all that has gone wrong appears to be the subject gets a bit embarrassed (depending on their prudes), and their marketability might have been affected (not necessarily in a negative manner).

Yeah, it's not cool in the same way it's not cool to publish someone's home address or anything private¹ on the internet, but the consequences are hardly disastrous, so it is possible that people have actually thought "what could possibly go wrong" and decided to take the smallish risk anyway.

¹ Such as private parts².

² Yeah, I know where my coat is, thank you.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Yes.

Not the same thing.

Rape is a question of consent - "I can't remember if I said yes" makes it difficult to prove non-consent.

I was drunk and I forgot to lock the door - doesn't change the nature of the crime.It does mean you were stupid - but it doesn't mean it wasn't theft

[Fluffy Bunny]

Re: Yes.

"I forgot to lock the door"... absurd as it may seem in civilised parts of the world, but in Australia, if you forget to lock the door of your car and it is stolen, YOU have committed a crime ! ! ! !

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: Yes.

Rape most certainly a matter of consent. That is the key element that determines rather a mundane and perfectly legal activity is actually a crime.

However, this distracts from the fact that this particular situation includes a 3rd party that was tasked with being responsible. It doesn't matter if the starlet was drunk. She had a body guard and that body guard failed to do his job. Regardless of the existence of the criminal, the security professional is equally responsible for his malpractice.

Except holding Apple responsible would violate the media narrative that so called journalists have decreed will be propagated about Apple.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

"I've never understood, why they would upload such photos onto an online service in the first place"

You've completely missed the point. This is not a case of people explicitly "uploading" anything to an online service ... this is an automatic and supposedly trusted backup service which uses an online repository to store the data in order to be accessable to all of the users devices. It is largely transparent to your average user.

As per previously highly upvoted comments, the issue here is that your average user has no idea of the implications of their backup data living in what is effectively the public domain!

[Amorous Cowherder]

Re: Yes.

"you fucking well have plenty to fear now!"

Well no, not really. I'm not a complete twat who'd even contemplate posting anything as moronic as a naked picture of myself in a public place!

IT lesson #132 for Normal People - Internet = Public Town Square. If you won't do it down the local town square, then don't do it on the internet!

[yoganmahew]

Re: Yes.

"If you won't do it down the local town square, then don't do it on the internet!"

Really? So you won't be sending any business or personal sensitive information by email/text either? You don't mind your phone logs being posted in the local town square?

I've no idea if those bits of data are stored on the iCloud, but, I suspect, neither do you... this seems to support me - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12519?viewlocale=en_US

[Marcelo Rodrigues]

Re: Yes.

"Really? So you won't be sending any business or personal sensitive information by email/text either?"

No, I won't. Would You?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes.

> I'm not a complete twat who'd even contemplate posting anything as moronic as a naked picture of myself in a public place!

Famous last words.

Can you be *really* sure that none of your data anywhere goes at some point all cloudy? Not even in the future when you install upgrade 'X' to your OS?

And btw, it is only "moronic" if you do not want those pics to be there. Plenty of people are actually perfectly OK with posting nude photos of themselves online. There are whole websites dedicated to the stuff, some porno-ish, some not.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: Yes.

"Well no, not really. I'm not a complete twat who'd even contemplate posting anything as moronic as a naked picture of myself in a public place!"

Bugger!

I wish you'd told me that before I wasted all those days looking..

[chivo243]

Re: Yes.

note to self, don't store nude selfies in the cloud, especially a cloud beginning with a lower case vowel...

Don't expect this little wibble on the www to wake people up. The kool-aid has been consumed long ago or the village idiots have the keys to kingdom.

I wouldn't know these naked chicks if they were sitting on my couch.... well, I hope I'd heard their name. Sorry what was that? Her name? Sorry, you've lost me... your name reminds me of a city.

[LucreLout]

Re: Yes.

"name reminds me of a city"

Hull? No, that's not right... Grimsby! Grimsby Hilton.

[Alan W. Rateliff, II]

Re: Yes.

But the reality is, no one will wake up. Apple will fix the hole, will assure everyone things will be fine, and life will continue while short memories fade. This will all be forgotten in a few months (or sooner) as the distribution becomes less public and falls back into the underbelly of the Internet. Not a single celebrity's life will be ruined by this leak, and besides, they are celebrities and live at a level well above the average person. I mean, I am no Jennifer Lawrence or Leelee Sobieski, so who wants to ever peek at my nudies? Everyone will continue using cloud services, ignoring the rain which falls from them, happily oblivious thanks to the it-won't-ever-happen-to-me mentality.

If, what was it, 100GB of leaked private photos from Facebook failed to wake up the masses, will this? Maybe we will finally reach the tipping point of a lack of privacy, but what exactly is privacy today, anyway? Especially when we are encouraged, if not required, more and more to use these kinds of services for our day-to-day interactions.

@Anonymous Cowherder: we have been beating that drum for years. YEARS. Still no one hears it. "But it it's private! I can block people!" Sure, a great service with a lock... but it is a shitty lock.

[Kiwi]

Re: Yes.

As to all those who brush off their reliance on cloud with "I have nothing to hide, so nothing to fear" - you fucking well have plenty to fear now!

I don't rely on it, but I do use it as an integral tool for backing up the servers (data that needs to be protected is encrypted at the server level, stuff too sensitive for cloud backup won't be on the web servers anyway), and for some web dev work - syncing files between machines (must set up Owncloud if it's any good).

Used right "cloud" is a good tool that makes life (especially some distributed backups) easier, and can be used to shift some load off the server (ala CDN and a few other services). Used wrong, it's an embarrassment looking for a paper to be published in.

I don't have anything to fear from using it. I am quite selective in what I allow on there, and the only thing I could be embarrassed about is some of the test code that may reach that level.

I am somewhat more seasoned than the average netizen, and I'm quite sure that many of the average ones will put all sorts of wrong stuff on there. But that's not me - I know I have nothing to fear from a breach at my provider because I don't put data on there that could be a problem.

Treat the net as the front page of the local rag. If you won't want it in one, don't put it in the other.

(SaaS is another matter - I like my machines to be able to be offline and still usable without any "phone home" nonsense, and over here the cost of mobile bandwidth has me counting every byte -so I don't want any extra programs dialing out)

[TReko]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

They might not have even known that Apple was backing up their Camera Roll pics to iCloud, it's just built in by default.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

"They might not have even known that Apple was backing up their Camera Roll pics to iCloud, it's just built in by default."

You have to create the iCloud account and then enable backups to it, but once you've done that it operates transparently in the background.

Apple store staff tend to helpfully set this up for you if you're not all that tech savvy like my wife and take your iPad in to them with the voucher for the 'free setup'.

Someone raised an interesting question earlier ... once you delete the photo on the device, what does iCloud do with the backup? Presumably it keeps it for some period in case you want to restore from the backup ... I imagine it functions much the same way as Time Capsule does.

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

But it's the cloud! Full of fluffy kittens and unicorns and chocolate fountains. Nothing bad can happen there.

[AndrueC]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

Full of fluffy kittens and unicorns and chocolate fountains.

Are those euphemisms?

[Marcelo Rodrigues]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

"But it's the cloud! Full of fluffy kittens and unicorns and chocolate fountains. Nothing bad can happen there."

The fluffy kittens are dead - all poisoned by drinking from the chocolate fountains (where the unicorns crapped all over).

[tony2heads]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

'safe' means it is never, ever, going to be lost 'convenient' means anyone can find it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Trust your data to the cloud they said

It was stolen from the cloud they said.

Still no evidence of where they came from.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

I thought Ariana Grande was a big new space rocket.

[Diamandi Lucas]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

"I thought Ariana Grande was a big new space rocket."

I thought it was a drink from Starbucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

It is an extremely big drink from Starbucks that contains so much sugar and caffeine that it is able to fuel a satellite launch.

The Soyuz Grande contains added vodka, which is why the satellites sometimes don't go precisely where required.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

Surely it's a nice shiny new font?

[chivo243]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

I thought it was a new font!

[Warm Braw]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

I must confess my immediate thought on reading the headline was "Eben Upton is a celebrity now?"

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

"I must confess my immediate thought on reading the headline was "Eben Upton is a celebrity now?""

Well some people seem to be a big fan of his "pins".

[Rikkeh]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

You might say that about the other two, but the first is a three time Oscar-nominated, one time Oscar-winning actor and the front of one of the most successful movie franchises of the last few years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

> You might say that about the other two, but the first is a three time Oscar-nominated, one time Oscar-winning actor and the front of one of the most successful movie franchises of the last few years

Is this your way of telling me I should get out more?

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

I would have had to google most of them on the list as similarly I had never heard of most of them.

Topically I had heard of Jennifer Lawrence but would never have been able to state what work she hard done, Kate Upton seems to be yet another model where her most notable assets are cleavage (so complaining about flesh shots seems to be pushing it a bit, but there are expectations of some privacy) and while Ariana Grande initially looked like yet another dead eyed model it turns out that she has starred in some kids program for a bit and, err, that seems to be it.

What they old saying about publicity? :) These "stars" and their websites are probably getting more attention than they ever have had before.

[Glenturret Single Malt]

Re: Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande

Having googled Kate Upton, I was pleasantly surprised to find that she does have some flesh to display and is not one of those anorexic stick insect creatures that inhabit many fashion photographs nowadays.

[Sebastian A]

"They posted the images to the Reddit '/b' image board from where it was quickly circulated on social media sites including Reddit."

Reddit has a /b? Oh the horror.

[Katie Saucey]

I don't go near Reddit...

...but I'm pretty sure the writer made a mistake and should have wrote "4Chan.org/b". I just checked a few minutes ago and there are dozens of threads about this on both /b and /pol

[Anonymous Coward]

It's being referred to as 'The Fappening'

[Mitoo Bobsworth]

Slow learners

All the celeb hacks over the years, and all the ensuing embarrassment - and people still do this? Digital pron of yourself will never be safe anywhere - ANYWHERE!

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Slow learners

Indeed. I think El Reg's advice is very misguided...

"Vulture South recommends readers lock down or delete their explicit photos whenever possible"

Whereas *I* simply recommend that you don't take them in the first place. My policy is so simple that even a celeb ought to be able to manage it. El Reg's advice presumably requires some expertise in IT security, and even the NSA doesn't seem to be able to manage it, so how the hell are celebs supposed to?

[solo]

Re: Slow learners

".. don't take them in the first place .."

+1

Why'd you use a blurry, pixelated, noisy image from a front camera when you can afford a big expensive mirror (or a boyfriend, or millions of fans) to adore you.

[Destroy All Monsters]

"100 women victimised"

> 2014

> "Oh my expensive bits!"

Really.... I can get excellent pics of ladies' anatomies for a few bucks in glorious hi-res. Why should I care about celebrity skin?

[Anomalous Cowturd]

Re: I can get excellent pics of ladies' anatomies for a few bucks...

You pay for fap fodder?

Amateur!

:o)

[oolor]

Re: I can get excellent pics of ladies' anatomies for a few bucks...

>You pay for fap fodder?

One has to capitalize the broadband cost. Not exactly the type of material to slurp off of WiFi.

[frank ly]

Assailant?

"The assailant was likely to face a well-resourced investigation by the US authorities."

Are we using that word for data 'thieves' now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Assailant?

Didn't you know that the US has this PC habit of replacing very good descriptions with other 'nicer' and often 'softer' ones.

co-worker == colleague

perp == someone who may have committed a crime (Actually 100% of the population has so we are all 'perps')

assailant = dirty rotten b******d who had the gaul to attack

etc

etc

I refuse to use the term co-worker. IMHO, it [redacted]. What is wrong with colleague? It is gender neutral. No one has ever been able to properly explain why colleague is so bad.

There must be countless thoudsands of people employed in the UD Department of Language Correctness dreaming up things like this.

[et tu, brute?]

Re: Assailant?

They use "co-worker" because "colleague" is too difficult a word! :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Assailant?

.. and they often find a hyphen too much trouble to type, so it makes me wonder what exactly is done to a cow when you 'ork' the poor thing.

[Maty]

Re: Assailant?

'Assailant = dirty rotten b******d who had the gaul to attack...'

Please tell me that the Gaul was Obelix

[DocJames]

Re: Assailant?

Co-worker is for those who are not going to be around long enough to warrant colleague status, or shouldn't be allowed to think their job is secure enough to be around that long. Just fellow worker status, so keep working. It applies to both ends of the relationship, just like colleague. People don't have both co-workers and colleagues, you have either/or.

It's a hierarchy thing. If you have co-workers, you best get back to flipping those burgers. If you have colleagues, you're permitted some time to browse the internet at work, because all that intellectual effort of managing means you need to chill for 5 minutes here and there.

DOI: I have colleagues.

[itzman]

Re: Assailant?

"who had the gaul to attack"

Isn't that some kind of racial slur on France?

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: Assailant?

A colleague is someone that I may or may not currently work with that practices in the same field I do.

A co-worker may or may not work in the same field I do but they work at the same company I do.

They aren't the same thing.

[Old Handle]

Re: Assailant?

No, we call them burglarizationists.

[Triggerfish]

Daily Mash

I know its from last time a celeb was hacked but the daily mash article on the Scarlett Johansson pics was worth a giggle.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/johansson-photos-change-everything-says-dawkins-201109164314

[Anonymous Coward]

Celebs get upset because ........

These photos show them as real people, not as the flawlessly bodied beings photoshop and their agents like to portray.

BTW.

In a world where someone announces their uncle has prostitute cancer, colleague and college are spelt nearly the same = coleege/coledge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Celebs get upset because ........

I read the commend that Jennifer Lawrence thought it would hurt her career?

Seriously? take a look at the actors in Game of Thrones, I don't think a bit of nudity has hurt their careers.....

[TReko]

iCloud security is the real story here

Sure some hacker got some pics of naked movie stars and published them.

What else is being gathered from iCloud that is not making the headlines, stuff like spying or industrial espionage?

Apple's iCloud security has been breached, and we need to know how, password resets or were these passwords in the trove that Russian hackers reportedly stole a while back.

Perhaps it is related to this hack from 3 months ago:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/05/27/idevice_ransomware/

[phuzz]

Re: iCloud security is the real story here

Or possibly it was an employee who's been collecting these pictures as they came across them, and then they (the employee) got hacked?

I'm sure that there's a few stashes of private pics that have been collected by unscrupulous employees at cloud firms and mobile phone networks etc.

[Christoph]

Re: iCloud security is the real story here

Or they each took their phone in for repair/service, and the staff there carefully checked all image files.

Because obviously they have to do that in case they discover child porn that they need to report.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: iCloud security is the real story here

I suppose its possible that 100 celebs have taken their phones to the same apple store, but it seems unlikely.

If you're talking about someone more central with access to all the icloud photos, then surely it would be a case of too many photos to wade through to find the celebs?

[Anonymous Coward]

iCloud security is probably not at issue here

I think it is more likely that someone was able to get their passwords, either by guessing them, or compromising/sniffing passwords used on other sites and finding they had the same password on iCloud. They could put up a fake access point in the right Hollywood restaurant and catch their Facebook login details, which for too many people are probably identical to their iCloud login details.

If it was an iCloud compromise they'd have a lot more useful stuff than a few nude pictures, and probably wouldn't want to tip their hand to the valuable content they did have in such a stupid way. Consider if you broke into iCloud and could access the synced iMessage and Calendar entries of everyone, including billionaires and CEOs. Buy the right stock before a big deal is announced and you become a millionaire overnight!

OK, I suppose if a spotty 14 year old broke in he'd go straight for the nude pics and ignore the money making potential. Good thing he didn't post the nude selfies of billionaires and CEOs!

[theblackhand]

Re: iCloud security is the real story here

It doesn't appear to have been a iCloud security breach - just good old fashioned social engineering.

There are some interesting points made in the following article s well as steps on how to improve your phone security.

https://www.nikcub.com/posts/notes-on-the-celebrity-data-theft/

[Anonymous Coward 101]

iCloud

Apple do not make it clear to the average user what iCloud saves to the cloud by default. iCloud is not a visible service unlike any other cloud services; you cannot click on any iCloud app. I think a great deal of people will be surprised (not least these celebrities) about what is saved to iCloud by default. Combine that fact with shitty passwords and you have a problem.

[Iznik]

Re: Assailant?

>assailant = dirty rotten b******d who had the gaul to attack

That would explain all the Asterix.

[dogged]

Re: Assailant?

garybuseyclapping.gif

[Anonymous Coward]

Soo... any of the pics any good?

Or is it the usual cheap cellphone blurry out of focus junk?

[Velv]

Re: Soo... any of the pics any good?

If it's true it's an iCloud breach, then it's iPhone photos, so not even as good as the other "blurry out of focus junk"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Soo... any of the pics any good?

That's a bit unfair. The camera on the iPhone is quite good and is optimised for "skin tones", so it's not unreasonable to assume that one of the commonest use cases for which it has been configured is indeed "nude selfies".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Soo... any of the pics any good?

they show the poor low light noise of the iPhone, but not out of focus...

I think they showed Jennifer Lawrence in a good way, nothing disgusting, but nice candid photos....

(I only looked for research purposes, I had to see a few images to fully understand the nature of the issue)

of course whoever hacked her needs to be caught and punished appropriately...

i.e. have them do a photo shoot duplicating every photo that was released.. Make them embarrassed and feel violated...

[LucreLout]

Re: Soo... any of the pics any good?

"of course whoever hacked her needs to be caught and punished appropriately..."

Given a medal? Standing ovation?

(It's a joke!)

For as long as there have been networks, there have been hackers. For as long as there have been hackers there have been successful intrusions. It will be ever thus.

Harsher penalties in the UK or USA won't make a difference if the hacker is sitting in Russia, China, or elsewhere.

[Zmodem]

they all need to head to the gym not the lawers office

[Anonymous Coward]

Honest Question

Are all these genuine leaks or is it a guerrilla marketing thing?

[Andy Taylor]

A genuine question from my days supporting iPhones

"How do I stop my iPhone pictures from appearing on my son's iPod Touch?"

Same iCloud account on both devices, PhotoStream switched on... I can only imagine the conversation.

[dan1980]

Let's open with honesty - if I had the opportunity to choose any two women, I might well pick Jennifer Lawrence. Twice.

So, in so far as it is possible to care about someone you don't know and whose life you are unfamiliar with, I am very sorry for these people that this has happened. It's a gross breach of privacy and I can imagine it feeling very much like a rather personal violation. BUT . . . it's just not right to be so ignorant of technology these days and certainly not if you are actively making use of it.

My partner and I are not at all the type to take risqué photographs of ourselves or each other*, however, if I was going to, it would be done with a standard digital camera and then the photos downloaded to a PC and removed from the camera. They would not be taken on a device that I carry around with me and could therefore be lost, stolen, or simply picked up by an inquisitive friend/relative/child/co-worker.

As several above have said, the likely scenario was that people took these on their phones and they were automatically backed-up to their iCloud accounts. This shows us three things:

• Boasting 'it just works' is great but there is a lot to be said for a bit of forced manual intervention now and then.
• You can't just trust default options blindly.
• Cloud-integration should be 'opt-in' rather than 'opt-out'.

* - If someone else enjoys photographing themselves then I am all for it if it makes them happy - it's just not for us.

[Invidious Aardvark]

From what I can tell it is opt-in. You have to enter your iCloud credentials in the settings section then configure it to sync your photos, then go to the photos/camera app settings and select the option to upload your photos to iCloud as well.

This shows me you should probably investigate what you're talking about rather than making assumptions. Using the famous man-in-the-pub-said ("As several above have said...") as a source doesn't make what they said facts; a little research (it's really not that hard - try Apple's website) goes a long way.

[Anonymous Coward]

"it would be done with a standard digital camera and then the photos downloaded to a PC and removed from the camera. "

I think you mean with a DSLR, standard digital cameras are terrible in low light... if your going to make the effort and take risqué photographs, use a decent tool, especially if your the only ones to look at it while your alive, when you hit your 70's it might be nice to look back at the photos.....

I always wonder what will happen to your photos when you die... myself, I would like my whole photo album to be published freely, with a strict no commercial use policy, after my death, (well my kids can choose to hide embarrassing photos of themselves if they really want)

[AndrueC]

it would be done with a standard digital camera and then the photos downloaded to a PC and removed from the camera.

This problem isn't specific to The Cloud(TM). The difference between deleting and erasing was causing people problems (and even saving their bacon on occasions) long before we started connecting computers together.

Files can be recovered after deleting from SD cards just as readily as they can be from hard disks. In fact with flash memory using cell sparing and wear levelling your ability to actually erase data from them may be even less than you think. One way to extend the lifetime of flash memory would be to have a flag to indicate that a cell is 'empty' rather than wasting a write cycle filling it with zeroes ;)

Come to that hard disks use block sparing as well so you might find that a copy of your naughty bits has been archived for posterity that way and 'had difficulty reading that block' is not the same thing as 'that block can't be read'. The rule I've followed in the 30+ years that I've been using computers is to assume that data you want can always be lost and data you don't want can always be found :)

[ecofeco]

TestDisk.

Nothing is safe from this except a mutlipass wipe. Not fdisk, not even a new partition. (although an image wipe and copy seems to do a pretty good job)

Many, MANY phone/camera/PC photos are recovered with this. You know, the ones either stolen or traded in for your new phone.

[Robert E A Harvey]

Sloobs

I don;t understand the hype. Why do people want to look at these pics? Do celebs have different bits than the rest of us? Are they trying to look at Mr Film Star's Boomlong? or Mrst Film Star's Sloobs?

Or is this just more fluff about the "look at me" people?

[Magnus_Pym]

I'm starting up a course for media types.

£1,000 for a two hour session on how to protect you on-line persona.

It consists of 1 hour 59 minutes drinks, nibbles and introductions and then I'll just tell 'em. Don't ever get drunk or horny and especially not both at the same time.

Any takers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doh

If you don't want your personal naked photos on the Internet, DON'T UPLOAD THEM!

Still if you are rich and famous at least you can count on a well-resourced investigation by US authorities.

[AussieCanuck46]

National Security

I'm glad to know that the FBI takes these kinds of security breaches seriously. The national security implications of seeing some babe's booty without first paying a fee is undeniable. Perhaps by happenstance everyone else whose iCloud data security has been breached will derive a bit of side-benefit from this incident thanks to the entertainment industry.

[axemanrj]

I'll be ok, I let google do all my thinking for me. So much easier!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re. Doh

Expect "copyright enforcement" notices to be sent out to anyone who downloaded these, no doubt their ISP has a record.

£100 a file should do it.

[ecofeco]

How's that cloud thing workin' for ya?

Would you like another?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple iClownd security allowed unlimited logins attempts

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/celebrity_photo_hack_blame_apple_for_its_disregard_for_user_security.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Flame wars on the forums??

Silence them. We don't want any bad publicity before the big launch. https://discussions.apple.com/backsoon/error.html

[John Savard]

Hostage crisis?

They've released pictures of 17 celebrities, but claim to have them of 100 celebrities. Are they going to release more pictures unless Hollywood stops... doing something? Or unless the government frees imprisoned hackers? Like ISIS is threatening to kill journalists one by one?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. It could just be a bandwidth issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile in other news..

War in Europe as Russia continues invasion of sovereign nation.

War in N. Africa continues: Jihadists butcher another journalist.

Ebola rages uncontrolled across Africa as WHO pleads for military intervention.

I know some people find leaked pics of vacuous twits who undress for money anyways to be interesting, but I am amazed at how journalistic sites like the BBC find time and space to cover this non-news against the backdrop of current affairs at present.

I don't know if you guys are paying attention, but current state of world affairs looks like Tom Clancy and Dan Brown had a love child and it wrote an airport novel. Ebola 'kills-before-it-spreads' is now spreading, having reached centres of population. Russians shot down an airliner and their tanks are rolling into a neighboring european country: 'Peace in our time' EU doesn't know what to do. And in Arabia al-qaeda has somehow grown from a Saudi Arabian madman's personal fantasy to potentially having its own state.

Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meanwhile in other news..

But this is just business as usual, I used to like the TV documentary show "The Rock and Roll Years" that played popular music hits from a specific year in say the 60's-70s over news reports from that year, that's when you realise there have always been conflicts, barbarity, terrorism, famine and disease in the world, and probably always will be.

It was truly amazing how similar the news from 40-50 odd years ago was to today, the only difference is we now have 24 hour news which needs to fill airtime and grab your attention therefore news is much more about "entertainment" (which includes scaring the living daylights out of people, which also ties in nicely with various Governments need to remove more personal freedom, or to be able to declare wars in order to "guarantee your safety)".

Stop watching or reading the news, you will feel a lot better, 99.9% of it is pure sensationalist crap.

[James 36]

Re: Meanwhile in other news..

yes , but this about breasts and stuff...

Does heat magazine outsell the times yet ?

anyho, I imagine the main reason the celebs are miffed is that they cannot monetize the images now as they are already out there so the fall back of lads mags to re-stimulate a floundering career and pave the way for a reality tv show has had to be temporarily shelved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meanwhile in other news..

"yes , but this about breasts and stuff..."

And that is precisely what makes this a prime news story, take a look at a "serious" newspaper like the Daily Mail (lmfao!), at least half it's content is celebrity "breasts and stuff..."

[James 36]

Re: Meanwhile in other news..

sometimes makes me wonder how a publication such as the Daily Mail can call itself a newspaper and not a gossip rag given the balance of the content.

Mind you the comments pages on Daily Mail articles gives an interesting insight in to the open mindedness of the readership , such an outpouring of bile, it makes for difficult reading.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Meanwhile in other news..

War in Europe as Russia continues invasion of sovereign nation.

I supposed you could just about consider the Balkan states to be a part of Europe, geographically, but this conflict is hardly in what most people would commonly consider to be Europe, at least in a political sense

War in N. Africa continues: Jihadists butcher another journalist.

The last time I checked a map, Iraq and Syria were in the middle East, not North Africa. Not that there aren't any wars going on there, but I think you may be a little confused.

With map-reading skills like these, are you, by any chance, a US citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: in the future...

If that was the case and, as you note, the commodity value tended to zero, then nobody would be interested. For most of its history, that was the case for the human race. And today, is it the societies which aren't hung up about nudity that have the highest levels of abuse of women and children?

Clothes have a number of advantages, including extending the range of the species, but let's not pretend that, except in the minds of the followers of one particular group of religions originating in the Middle East, wearing them has anything to do with morality or ethics.

[Loyal Commenter]

How many times?

If you want something to remain private, DON'T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET! That includes anything with 'cloud' in the name, and especially anything controlled by large companies such as Apple.

Not that I don't feel sorry for the slebs involved, but this reflects poorly on their powers of judgement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Miley Cyrus?

I bet Miley Cyrus would ADD more photos of hers to the leak, given the chance... she seems to be after THAT kind of publicity for the last year.

[Bucky 2]

JLaw?? Oh... Never mind

I was interested when I thought I could find some Jude Law selfies.

Never mind.

[Naughtyhorse]

'The assailant seems likely to face a well-resourced investigation by US authorities, who take a dim view of this sort of thing.'

unless it's them doing it of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo, poor oppressed female celebs

Ever heard of 'prevention is better than cure'?

Darlings, stop taking naughty selfies and/or uploading them to 'The Cloud'.

[Kiwi]

Probably been said but..

#1, these are generally rather low-importance people anyway (with the exception of US officials, who for many of us rank lower even than the decaying faeces of pond-scum but whom some yanks seem strangely attached to)

#2 They chose to take the pictures with electronic devices, connect those devices to the 'net, and store those pics online

#2b Or they were taken by by paparazzi, in which case a long prison sentence is inappropriate - immediate execution is more appropriate. Not of the hacker who brought such idiocy to light, but of the 'razzis and maybe of the celebs..

#3 In many cases, 10 hours prison time would be far too much for such things (and I say this as someone who has been a "victim" of one nasty stalker, who went to extreme lengths to cause problems).

The old rule still applies, if you don't want it published don't put it in writing.