| Date | August 31, 2014 |
|---|---|
| Also known as |
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| Type | |
| Target | Celebrities |
| Verdict | Pleaded guilty |
| Convictions |
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| Sentence |
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On August 31, 2014, a collection of nearly five hundred private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and swiftly disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. The leak was dubbed "The Fappening" or "Celebgate" by the public. The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud,[1][2] or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims' passwords.[3][4] Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks.[5][6]
The incident was met with varied reactions from the media and fellow celebrities. Critics argued the leak was a major invasion of privacy for the photos' subjects, while some of the alleged subjects denied the images' authenticity. The leak also prompted increased concern from analysts surrounding the privacy and security of cloud computing services such as iCloud—with a particular emphasis on their use to store sensitive, private information.
2014-09-01 Guardian: Arthur 1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).2014-09-02 Washington Post was invoked but never defined (see the help page).2014-09-01 Irish Independent was invoked but never defined (see the help page).2015-01-02 International Business Times was invoked but never defined (see the help page).2014-09-02 Apple was invoked but never defined (see the help page).2014-09-02 Verge was invoked but never defined (see the help page).