Hundreds of nude personal photos of celebrities of whom were mostly women surfaced early in August 31, 2014 though a celebrity photo leak incident.
With over 100 victims that included personalities from sports, music, film and television, nude and racy photos were published online, initially through the site 4chan. And then passed on to other social networks such as Tumblr, Imgur and Reddit. Although as of late, the involved actresses have pursued legal action to stop the spread of their personal photos, who's to say that these pictures have seen the last of day.
Among the female personalities victimized in the celebrity photo leak 2014 includes Allegra Carpenter, Abigail Spencer, Alana Blanchard, Avril Lavigne, Amber Heard, Becca Tobin, Brie Larson, Carley Pope, Carmella Carcia, Gabrielle Union, Hayden Panettiere, Jojo, Jennifer Lawrence, Kaley Cuoco, Kate Upton, Kate Bosworth, Rihanna, and Scarlett Johansson.
The hacker reportedly attained access to the iCloud of these personalities and downloaded not only photos but also videos, text messages, emails, schedules and contact information.
The iCloud is an online storage created by Apple Inc. in 2011. It services almost 400 million users world wide and has been a constant companion for many Mac users as allows files to be accessed across Apple devices such as the desktop, laptops, ipads and itouch. This technology enables the user to manage files in email, contacts, bookmarks, notes, documents, calendars, and lo-and-behold, photos.
In the recent celebrity photo leak, users were shocked that their photos were accessed through their use of the iCloud and have since been demanding to increase Apple's security in this storage. Apple launched its own investigating and released a press statement on the matter in Apple.com:
"After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple's systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved."
