PapayaSF and AnonTechie write in with 2 stories which seem to be linked. The first is the leak of nude and personal photographs of celebrities, and the second is perhaps the flaw that allowed someone to access the photographs.
Nude celebrities, bitcoins, and Apple: it's a story seemingly designed to stir up the entire internet. Scores of private photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Kirsten Dunst, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead have been leaked (allegedly from Apple's iCloud), and posted on 4chan in exchange for bitcoins. A list of 100+ names has appeared, but pictures have not yet appeared for many names on the list (including Kate Bosworth, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, and Kaley Cuoco). Victoria Justice claims the photos of her are fake. Twitter accounts are being shut down. The story is still developing, so grab your popcorn.
An alleged breach in Apple’s iCloud service may be to blame for countless leaks of private celebrity photos this week.
On Monday, a Python script emerged on Github (which we’re not linking to as there is evidence a fix by Apple is not fully rolled out) that appears to have allowed malicious users to ‘brute force’ a target account’s password on Apple’s iCloud, thanks to a vulnerability in the Find my iPhone service. Brute force attacks are where a malicious user uses a script to repeatedly guess passwords to attempt to discover the correct one.
The vulnerability allegedly discovered in the Find my iPhone service appears to have allowed attackers to use this method to guess passwords repeatedly without any sort of lockout or alert to the target. Once the password has been eventually matched, the attacker can then use it to access other iCloud functions freely.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:22AM
I was afraid the SN would be populated by geriatric sexless (potentially basement dwelling) beings, what a relief to see (is infer better?) otherwise
(maybe a poll to indirectly assess the age distribution? Something like "first computer game you ever played" or "CPU make/model of the first computer you used, even if not owned"?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:41AM
Or somebody just decided "over-rated" wasn't enough to counter-act the equally insipid "insightful" mod that post got - as in your ignorance is of no consequence to anyone but yourself, certainly not brag worthy.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:07AM
What made you think I was bragging rather than expressing a simple fact? (same as "Last female actor that awake some interest Milla Jovovich - fortunately, I didn't need to search for naked pics of her", or "you know, if I'm interested in nudes or porn, I really don't care if the subjects are celebs or not. I dare anyone to recognize a celeb only by her private bits")
Are you suggesting that knowledge in re. celebs are of larger than "but yourself" consequences, thus maybe brag-worthy?
(is any poster here earning her/his bread as a gossip reporter? If so, I'm curious, how is it like? What satisfaction you derive? No, serious, I'm really curious, I simply don't get the fascination on "celebrities")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:30PM
> What made you think I was bragging rather than expressing a simple fact?
Potato, potato. Your own ignorance isn't worth expressing - it informs no one of anything even remotely useful or entertaining.
You could say "I swear if you showed me an IP packet I wouldn't recognize it" and it would still be just as insipid.