• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward

 | 

Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying

 | 

MedusaLocker ransomware group is looking for pentesters

 | 

Google confirms Salesforce CRM breach, faces extortion threat

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 57

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 536 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Embargo Ransomware nets $34.2M in crypto since April 2024

 | 

Germany limits police spyware use to serious crimes

 | 

Phishing attacks exploit WinRAR flaw CVE-2025-8088 to install RomCom

 | 

French firm Bouygues Telecom suffered a data breach impacting 6.4M customers

 | 

Columbia University data breach impacted 868,969 people

 | 

SonicWall dismisses zero-day fears after Ransomware probe

 | 

Air France and KLM disclosed data breaches following the hack of a third-party platform

 | 

CISA, Microsoft warn of critical Exchange hybrid flaw CVE-2025-53786

 | 

Microsoft unveils Project Ire: AI that autonomously detects malware

 | 

CERT-UA warns of UAC-0099 phishing attacks targeting Ukraine’s defense sector

 | 

Over 100 Dell models exposed to critical ControlVault3 firmware bugs

 | 

How CTEM Boosts Visibility and Shrinks Attack Surfaces in Hybrid and Cloud Environments

 | 

WhatsApp cracks down on 6.8M scam accounts in global takedown

 | 

Trend Micro fixes two actively exploited Apex One RCE flaws

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Hacking
  • Alleged iCloud flaw exploited in Naked celebrity hack

Alleged iCloud flaw exploited in Naked celebrity hack

Pierluigi Paganini September 02, 2014

Investigation on celebrities naked pictures leaked online raises suspicion that hackers breached iCloud accounts exploiting a flaw in the “Find my IPhone” feature.

An alleged hack of Apple’s iCloud accounts of many celebrities seems to be the cause of the leakage online hundreds of naked photos purportedly belonging to more than 100 actors and singers.  On Sunday, the pictures of 101 celebrities, including Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Kirsten Dunst and Selena Gomez. The images were posted on the online image sharing forum 4chan, and rumors report that the pictures were obtained from the celebrities’ accounts on the Apple iCloud service.

Anonymous users on 4chan claimed to have taken them from the service, despite Apple doesn’t commented the event, the analysis of the image metadata confirms that the majority was taken using an Apple device. A detailed analysis of the metadata related to the image leaked online was published on Pastebin, the photos found in a first lot released online are related to a period from December 2011 to 14 August 2014.

The anonymous user who first posted the celebrities’ photos claimed to have other pictures and explicit videos of Lawrence and requested donations via PayPal and Bitcoin for posting them.

The iCloud service allows Apple users to automatically store their data online, including photos, documents and emails. Users can access to their documents from anywhere once authenticated to the service.

It’s unlikely that hackers have compromised the Apple iCloud service, alleged attackers most likely used some hack to target specific accounts. It’s likely that the threat actor initially have compromised the iCloud account belonging to one or more celebrities, then “chaining” between accounts have obtained the access to the victim’s address book to gather data for further attacks.

There are many ways to violate the users’ account, an attacker could guess the users’ credentials (this is usually possible when the attackers have deep knowledge of their victims), conduct a social engineering attack, steal the sensitive data with a malware, or simply resetting victim’ accounts by finding the associated email address and then answering to ‘security questions’.

The website The Next Web, after the publication of the photos, has revealed the existence of a code for the hacking of iCloud service that was posted to the open-source website GitHub.

The application exploits a vulnerability, already fixed by Apple, in the Apple’s ‘Find my iPhone‘ service to guess passwords with unlimited attempts without being locked out.

Practically the attacker can brute force the victim’s account, an operation that could be improved by choosing the passwords from a dictionary of words and phrases, the choice of these databases could be supported by the knowledge of the victims, of their habits and their preferences.

 

icloud tool for bruteforce

 

One of the victims, Jennifer Lawrence, has confirmed the authenticity of her pictures, security experts are speculating that photos may have been stolen from victims’ Dropbox accounts, someone else has hypothesized  that insiders “with access to data somewhere made a private stash” and was subsequently hacked by the individual who leaked the pictures online.

However Apple has always declared that iCloud backups are encrypted:

“This means that your data is protected from unauthorized access both while it is being transmitted to your devices and when it is stored in the cloud.” states the company in official documentation.

The incident has raised the questions about the level of security offered by online services like the cloud storage, in May, another another incident caused serious problems for Apple users in Australia. Cybercriminals  have targeted a large number of Apple’s iCloud users with a sophisticated extortion scheme based on ransom request, the attackers allegedly hijacked Apple’s Find My iPhone feature, in this way criminals remotely lock iOS and Mac devices and send messages demanding ransom money.

At the time I‘m writing Apple has still issued no official statement on the incident, but  InfoSec Taylor Swift warned that other celebrities may have been impacted:

 “_This is just the beginning._ Folders of images with thumbnails visible have been shown, many celebs yet to be impacted who will.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Data leakage,Apple iCloud)

UPDATE – The Apple Media Advisory

Apple has released an update to Celebrity photo investigation, the company confirmed that the picture were stolen from celebrities’ accounts which suffered a “very targeted attack”, but its engineers exclude that the breach was caused by the exploitation of any flaws in the iCloud architecture neither the Find my iPhone feature.

“After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved. “ states the Apple advisory.


facebook linkedin twitter

Apple brute force celebrities data leakage Find My iPhone Hacking iCloud

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini August 11, 2025
Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini August 11, 2025
Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    Researchers cracked the encryption used by DarkBit ransomware

    Malware / August 12, 2025

    Chrome sandbox escape nets security researcher $250,000 reward

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    Smart Buses flaws expose vehicles to tracking, control, and spying

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    MedusaLocker ransomware group is looking for pentesters

    Hacking / August 11, 2025

    Google confirms Salesforce CRM breach, faces extortion threat

    Data Breach / August 10, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT