It is not uncommon for celebrities to be hit by leaks. Give or take a few expensive, premium safety apps (if even those) the media on their devices is only as safe as ours. After all, they use pretty much the same devices as the rest of us. However, while the pictures we clicked and not posted on social media would probably be ignored and even deleted promptly as gross by would-be hackers, the ones on celebrity devices are a different matter.
Apparently, hackers have targeted Emma Watson, Amanda Seyfried and other female celebrities, and pictures stolen from this group has been posted on 4chan and Reddit. The content of the leak ranges from normal snapshots to sexually explicit material.
While most of the affected celebrities are keeping mum on how this leak could happen, Emma Watson’s lawyer gave the following statement to the BBC:
Photos from a clothes fitting Emma had with a stylist a couple of years ago have been stolen. They are not nude photographs. Lawyers have been instructed and we are not commenting further.
The case reminds one of a 2014 hack that saw nude photos and video of several celebrities leaked online after hacker Ryan Collins stole them from iCloud accounts via a phishing scheme. Collins is serving 18 months in prison for his crimes.
Phishing schemes are all too common amongst the hacking landscapes and still work because people are too careless to check the website they are entering their details in. What happens in the majority of the cases is this: A person receives an e-mail from an ID that resembles the official, company mail when you glance at it carelessly. The mail, which has actually originated from hackers, asks them to enter their iCloud ID and password due to a security check or something similar.
The victims oblige, unaware that their details are being stored by the hackers. The latter than use the details they have obtained to access pictures and videos at their convenience and end up leaking them to the web.
