Jennifer Lawrence was the most popular celebrity at Nudography in the past three weeks. She addressed the leaked photos scandal for the first time in an
interview for Vanity Fair magazine a few days ago.
I might not agree with everything she said in that interview, especially equating hacking and leaking of her nude photos with a sex crime, but I still feel sorry for her and for every other celebrity involved in this scandal.
My recent onset of sympathy probably has something to do with a burglary at my place which happened last year. A burglar broke into my house. Went through everything, opened every drawer, every wardrobe and cupboard, went through all my personal belongings. Put a few of my electronic devices in a backpack, but something spooked him during the burglary and left the house in a hurry without taking anything.
I felt totally helpless for the next few months after the burglary. I was afraid to come home every day after the burglary, living in constant fear that I’ll find my home broken into again. Every sound at night, every shadow during the day would frighten the living hell out of me. All I could think was how to turn my place into a Temple of Doom, booby-trap the hell out of it, so in case the burglar would return, he’d got impaled on spikes shooting through the floor when he’d take a wrong step or maybe he’d get electrocuted on the spot when he’d try to open the wrong door…
But I am afraid that no matter what kind of measures I’d take to secure my home, a burglar could still come along that could circumvent all of them, just like Indiana Jones managed to come unharmed from the Temple of Doom in the movie.
At least I can sleep in peace, knowing that the burglar didn’t take my back-up hard drive with all my digital belongings. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for the celebs involved in the hacking scandal.
"That feeling of security can never be given back and there is no compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large invasion of privacy," was part of Christina Aguilera’s statement issued before sentencing
Christopher Chaney for hacking into email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry between November 2010 and October 2011.
I am sure some of these individuals, and celebs whose photos were leaked recently, are waking up in fear every morning that some more personal stuff might get leaked online. Scared of potently more bad news whenever their mobile phone is flashing with several unanswered calls from their publicists.
Something tells me that these leaks will go on indefinitely. Whoever hacked the storage accounts of these celebs got access to much more data than just photos and videos which were released so far.
iCloud, which is often mentioned as the prime source of these leaks, lets you store 15GB of data, Google Drive the same, then there’s Microsoft’s Onedrive, dropbox and numerous other online storage providers which let you store huge amounts of data online.
Online storage is not used for storing photos alone. I don’t use iCloud, but I checked a YouTube video explaining what it does. For instance, it lets you store your documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It lets you sync emails, contacts and calendars across all your digital devices.
Once an online account gets compromised, hackers have complete access to everything stored online. For now hackers are only leaking photos and videos of celebs. I have a feeling that in many cases they got access to much more than just photos and videos which were being slowly leaked on a daily basis since the whole thing started more than a month ago.
Complete email conversations between various parties, backed up sms messages, various contracts related to their jobs, perhaps medical records, bank statements. If someone is traveling a lot there might be copies of passports, ID cards, driving license cards, credit cards among the files. Online purchase history, complete online search history… Just mind boggling when you start to think about it.
It seems that these recent hacks were done by a few enthusiastic individuals whose purpose was to trade and exchange private photos and videos of their favorite stars with like-minded individuals.
A couple of lines from Jennifer Lawrence’s interview for Vanity Fair got me thinking that this will probably change in the future.
“I don’t care how much money I get for The Hunger Games. I promise you, anybody given the choice of that kind of money or having to make a phone call to tell your dad that something like that has happened, it’s not worth it.”
There were a few traders out there who tried to gain financially from their photo sets, but according to reports, their earnings were measured in fractions of Bitcoins (something like $40).
But when organized crime realizes that all this hacked files can be used for extortion and their financial gain, this hacking game will get on a whole new level I am afraid.
It’s hard to tell how these hackers got access to all these accounts, probably in different ways if there were many different hackers involved. Trial and error, phishing, resetting logins through security questions and brute force hacking are the most commonly named. It could be a crooked cop for all I know... someone with sticky fingers who got access to the stolen photos during the Christopher Chaney investigation…
Personally, I doubt they could really brute force their way in someone’s account. At least not in this day and age. While it wouldn’t take much time to brute force a six letter lower case alpha-numeric password through CrackerJack or John The Ripper offline (about 17 minutes, SHA-51), it would still take about 2.2 billion attempts to do it. And if we're speaking about doing it online, it’s hard to believe that an iCloud admin wouldn’t notice that kind amount of traffic on their server.
Out of curiosity I checked how to reset my hotmail, yahoo and gmail passwords. I didn’t go all the way through the password reset process, but all three providers would send me an sms message via mobile phone with details how to reset my password I presume, or a new password altogether. So, no security questions about my pets, primary school, my mother’s maiden name and stuff like that.
Phishing seems plausible. Setting up a spitting image of a login page which looks like a login page for your real storage account or a service you use often is probably not that hard. Not to mention that more and more people login into various websites with their Facebook, Google+ and other online ids. This makes obtaining vital logins even easier.
One thing that is not often mentioned, and I don’t know why, are third party apps in various mobile stores.
For instance, I use Nokia phone, but there’s no Gmail app in Microsoft’s app store to access my email through my phone the way I used to on my android phone. All I can do is download a third party app. There are at least 10 of them and they all look just like they were made by Google. If I install any of these apps I am sure it will ask me for my Gmail’s login credentials to access my email. The question is, what do these apps do with my login credentials? Just pass it on to google when I decide to check my email, or also store it somewhere else. If it’s the later, then I am in some serious shit. Actually, I am not because I don’t use them, but I am sure many others do.
I am not sure how this hacking story will unfold. It’s safe to assume that all the names from the original list will eventually get leaked. And like
Vanessa Hudgens, Jennifer Lawrence will have to live with the fact that each time she’ll have a new movie coming out, a new set of leaked photos will appear on the internet as well.
Here are Top 10 most searched for celebs in the past three weeks:
Here are some new names I noticed among the searches performed at Nudography in the past three weeks:
- Jessimae Peluso…. a comedian, she will perform in Las Vegas alongside Heather Mcdonald, the show is called Lipshtick Vegas.
- Victoria Cartagena… stars in Gotham, a new TV series based on the characters from Batman franchise which airs on FOX network
- Jadyn Wong… stars in Scorpion, a new TV series on CBS. The series is about an eccentric genius who forms an international network of super-geniuses to act as the last line of defense against the complicated threats of the modern world.
- Tracee Ellis Ross… stars in ABC's new TV series Black-ish. Donald Trump labeled the series as racist
- Erica Mena… got engaged to rapper Bow
- Marlane Barnes… was on an episode of Ray Donovan, Sons of Anarchy
- Cara Maria Sorbello… stars on MTV’s reality game show The Challenge; had her nude photos leaked nudes
- Cherami Leigh… stars in movie Not Cool, one of two films to emerge from a Starz competition show called The Chair
- Sonni Pacheco… got married to Jeremy Renner
- Sadie Robertson… stars on Duck Dynasty, is one of the contestants on Dancing With The Stars
- Liza Weil…. Stars on ABC’s new TV series How to Get Away with Murder. The series revolves around group of law students and their criminal defense professor who become involved in a murder plot that promises to change the course of their lives.
- Lola Kirke… stars in movie Gone Girl
- Heather McCartney … a Scottish model; got arrested for stripping off in a corporate box at the Aussie Rules Grand Final football match
- Paula Rhodes… stars in webseries The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy
- Meredith Eaton… stars on CBS’ NCIS: New Orleans, a spin-off of NCIS
- Kate Todd… aspiring Canadian singer/actress
- Natalie Skyy… stars on Sons of Anarchy
- Anne Leighton… starred on a recent episode of Hawaii Five-0
- Charlotte Ritchie… stars in BBC’s TV series Siblings, it’s a comedy series about siblings living together and the various crazy situations that ensue when they interact with other people
- Pisay Pao, Anastasia Baranova … star on Syfy’s zombie series Z Nation
- Charlotte Spencer… stars on Glue, a British drama series airing on E4 network. The plot of the series revolves around the friends of 14-year-old Cal Bray who is found dead and the investigation to find the killer reveals their dark and dirty secrets, hidden behind the picture-perfect English countryside.
- Chelsea Heath… a model, posed semi-nude for 138 water commercial
- Jenn Brown… co-hosts American Ninja Warrior
- Jen Kirkman… stand-up comedienne
- Nicole Meyer... nude in Treats magazine
Here are some nude celebrity photos from the recent additions to the database