The Fappeningmade headlines over a year ago , and Feds are still hound down the hackers responsible for unloosen hundreds of au naturel fame photo . Now there ’s been a new celebrity hack , one that might be somewhat more terrific .
This week , a 23 - year - oldwas charged with break into 130 celebrities ’ personal accountsby stealing passwords and instal malware . The malware helped the incriminate hacker , Alonzo Knowles , steal e-mail inboxes , sex tape , naked photos , unreleased scripts , and the celebrities ’ personal information , even societal security numbers . Feds overtake Knowles by posing as a buyer and attempting to acquire some of the hacked material and ended up charging him with felony reprehensible copyright infringement and identicalness theft .
The legal side of the story is only half as interesting as Knowles ’ state strategy . The New York Timesdescribes the basic method acting :
Mr. Knowles , who went by the name Jeff Moxey on email , acknowledged to an undercover police detective that it was unmanageable to hack someone directly when he is “ go after a high - profile celebrity , ” according to the complaint . So instead , he looked through photos for friends of the celebrity , and then hacked the friends ’ accounts for regain the famous person ’s personal information .
The side door approaching makes sense . Once he know the famous person ’s email or phone number , Knowles told the undercover investigators that he ’d either a ) text them claiming their email had been hacked with a liaison to reset the word or b ) asend them n electronic mail carry a virus that would give him memory access to the celebrity ’s computing equipment . Then , in the words of the complaint , Knowles “ changed the scope in the dupe ’s e-mail account in purchase order to maintain long - term access to it . ” Knowles just had to await for the secure poppycock to make it , so he could deal it to the high-pitched bidder . The victim ’ names were not listed in the charge .
So it ’s fundamentally a high stakes phishing onrush . The renown — just like you or me might — got play tricks into typing a password into a field built by a hacker . Obviously , whomever did the hacking possibly got a little cocky , since he tried to betray the private information to copper . However , it ’s a trivial frightening to see how sloppy security habits can easily give an intruder admission to everything you do online . Just suppose if every individual one of your e-mail got replicate and sent to 4chan .
It ’s very indecipherable if this Knowles lineament has anything to do withlast year ’s celebrity nude sculpture hack on . Unlike the Sony hacks , whichwas the outcome of a tolerant institutional failure , the spate of celebrity flak was due to careless exploiter . Users , like you and me .
So folk , let ’s review . You should alwaysdo two - step assay-mark , and you shouldnever typecast your passwords under dicey circumstances . Your private data is worth something to someone . So how much is security measures deserving to you ?
[ New York Times ]
Criminal Complaint Against Alonzo Knowles
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HackersHackingSecurity
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