Remember back in 2014 when a hacker managed to leak nude photos of various celebrities? Well, the person responsible for what is widely dubbed as “The Fappening” will now be facing the court.
The man responsible for the leak was Ryan Collins. According to the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, Collins illegally gained entry to more than 100 Apple and Google accounts in the process of accessing the celebrities’ photos sometime between November 1st 2012 and September 2nd 2014.
Collin’s modus operandi for this particular hack was a textbook example of social engineering. Collins would send an email to a victim from an address that appeared to be from Google or Apple. The email would ask the victim for their user name and password. Once the victim replied to the fake emails, he would access the iCloud and Gmail accounts of the victim and obtain complete iCloud backups with the help of an unnamed piece of software.
Collins has since pleaded guilty to “a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act”. Once the guilty plea is submitted, Collins will be facing up to five years in federal prison, although the authorities have recommended just 18 months. As for those that were responsible for posting up the nude pictures on the internet, the Justice Department states that there is an ongoing investigation done by the FBI.
Source: Mashable
