Pierluigi Paganini October 28, 2016

The person behind the Fappening case, Ryan Collins (36), received a lighter penalty than the five years prison initially on the table for the guilty plea.

Do you remember the Fappening case? In 2014, a cache of nude photos and videos of celebrities was leaked online, hackers have stolen them by accessing the iCloud accounts of the victims.

The list of victims is long and includes Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Kardashian, the hacker has stolen the private images of the celebrities and leaked their nude photos onto 4chan.

In March the DoJ announced the arrest of the alleged culprit of the popular Fappening case. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it charged Ryan Collins (36), of Pennsylvania for hacking Apple and Google E-Mail accounts belonging to more than 100 people, mostly celebrities.

“A Pennsylvania man was charged today with felony computer hacking related to a phishing scheme that gave him illegal access to over 100 Apple and Google e-mail accounts, including those belonging to members of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.” states the press release issued by the DoJ.

He was charged with hacking 50 iCloud and 72 Gmail accounts owned by Hollywood stars.

Collins admitted his responsibility and signed a plea agreement to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The man carried out spear phishing emails to the victims from November 2012 until the beginning of September 2014. In this way the man obtained the login credentials from its victims, then he illegally accessed their e-mail accounts to access sensitive and personal information.

The man behind the Fappening case focused his efforts to access nude pictures and videos from the victims, the DoJ announcement also revealed that in some circumstance he used a software to download the entire contents of the victims’ Apple iCloud backups.

In July, authorities arrested also a second man, Edward Majerczyk (28), he was charged with hacking 300 iCloud and Gmail accounts of which 30 belonged to Silver Screeners.

Both Majerczyk and Collins together hacked some 600 victims, for this reason, law enforcement has pled guilty to the charges involving sophisticated phishing attacks that saw them send malicious emails purporting to come from Apple and Google.

Collins received a lighter penalty than the five years prison initially on the table for the guilty plea.

The identity of the person who leaked the images is still a mystery.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Fappening 2017, iCloud)

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