What a week it’s been for Apple and the celebrities caught up in the biggest sex(y) nude photo leaks in the history of the internet. Even Wikipedia is officially onboard by listing the massive incident as “The Fappening”, as crowned by the millions of people participating on anon-ib, reddit and 4chan where the photographs were widely circulated. Attempts made to suppress the images were largely unsuccessful while Apple stayed very quiet to conduct a proper investigation to determine the origins of the leak. The multinational corporation released a statement regarding the incident that was initially marked as a large-scale iCloud hack.
Apple is Denying Security Breach Allegations for “The Fappening” Nude Photo Leaks
Apple says they are not at fault, the statement reads as follows:
“We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of photos of certain celebrities. When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple’s engineers to discover the source. Our customers’ privacy and security are of utmost importance to us.”
“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,”
Apple also advises their customers:
“To protect against this type of attack, we advise all users to always use a strong password and enable two-step verification. Both of these are addressed on our website at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4232.”
The original release contained photos of more than 100 individuals, which the hackers claimed were mostly A-list celebrities. Victims of the exploit, whose photo were leaked, are alleged to include:
- Kate Upton and her boyfriend Justin Verlander (from Verlander’s phone), confirmed by Upton’s lawyer.
- Jennifer Lawrence; her publicist confirmed the authenticity.
- Jenny McCarthy
- Rihanna
- Mary Elizabeth Winstead, confirmed on Twitter.
- Kirsten Dunst, confirmed the leak and criticized Apple’s iCloud service.
- Ariana Grande, denied authenticity.
- Victoria Justice, first denied authenticity,[18] later wrote about privacy on Twitter, seeking legal action.
- Teresa Palmer and ex-boyfriend Scott Speedman.
- McKayla Maroney, first denied the images were authentic on Twitter,[22] then later stated images were taken while underage.
- Selena Gomez
- Aubrey Plaza
- Yvonne Strahovski, denied authenticity
- Melissa Benoist and her fiance Blake Jenner, acknowledged the leak on Twitter
- Becca Tobin, confirmed leak via Twitter
- Brie Larson
- Lea Michelle
- Kaley Cuoco
