The 4chan user who posted the majority of the photos was soliciting for Bitcoin donations in order to publish more leaked pictures and videos. It's likely that the attackers initially compromisedtheiCloudaccount belonging to one or more celebrities, then by 'chaining' between accounts, obtained access to the victim's address book to gather data for further attacks. Users can access their documents from anywhere once authenticated to the service. The iCloud service allows Apple users to automatically store their data online, including photos, documents and emails. The incident has raised questions about the level of security offered by online services like cloud storage. The anonymous user who first posted the celebrities' photos claimed to have other pictures and explicit videos of Lawrence and requested donations via PayPal and Bitcoin for posting them. However, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead claimed that her leaked pictures were taken 'years ago.'Ī detailed analysis of the metadata of the leaked image is available on Pastebin at the following address:
Anonymous users on 4chan claimed to have taken them from the service, and despite that Apple hasn't commented on the event, the analysis of the image embedded EXIF metadata confirms that the majority were taken using Apple devices.
