Nude Photo Leak Proves Private Technology is Unreliable

By ANTHONY McCARTNEY

Sep. 1, 2014 5:38 PM EDT

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI said Mon­day it was address­ing alle­ga­tions that online accounts of sev­er­al celebri­ties, includ­ing Oscar-win­ner Jen­nifer Lawrence, had been hacked, lead­ing to the post­ing of their nude pho­tographs online.

The agency did not say what actions it was tak­ing to inves­ti­gate who was respon­si­ble for post­ing naked pho­tos of Lawrence and oth­er stars. Apple said Mon­day it was look­ing into whether its online pho­to-shar­ing ser­vice had been hacked to obtain the inti­mate images.

Lawrence, a three-time Oscar nom­i­nee who won for her role in “Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book,” con­tact­ed author­i­ties after the images began appear­ing Sunday.

Naked images pur­port­ing to be of oth­er female stars were also post­ed, although the authen­tic­i­ty of many could­n’t be con­firmed. The source of the leak was unclear.

“This is a fla­grant vio­la­tion of pri­va­cy,” Lawrence’s pub­li­cist Liz Mahoney wrote in a state­ment. “The author­i­ties have been con­tact­ed and will pros­e­cute any­one who posts the stolen pho­tos of Jen­nifer Lawrence.”

The FBI said it was “aware of the alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing com­put­er intru­sions and the unlaw­ful release of mate­r­i­al involv­ing high pro­file indi­vid­u­als, and is address­ing the matter.”

“Any fur­ther com­ment would be inap­pro­pri­ate at this time,” spokes­woman Lau­ra Eimiller wrote in a statement.

Apple Inc. spokes­woman Natal­ie Ker­ris said the com­pa­ny was inves­ti­gat­ing whether any iCloud accounts had been tam­pered with, but she did not give any fur­ther details.

“We take user pri­va­cy very seri­ous­ly and are active­ly inves­ti­gat­ing this report,” she said.

Actress Mary Eliz­a­beth Win­stead also con­firmed that nude pho­tos of her were post­ed online.

“To those of you look­ing at pho­tos I took with my hus­band years ago in the pri­va­cy of our home, hope you feel great about your­selves,” Win­stead post­ed on Twit­ter. Win­stead, who starred in “Final Des­ti­na­tion 3” and “Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter,” wrote that she thought the images had been destroyed.

“Know­ing those pho­tos were delet­ed long ago, I can only imag­ine the creepy effort that went into this,” Win­stead wrote.

The FBI has inves­ti­gat­ed pre­vi­ous leaks of nude celebri­ty images, includ­ing leaks involv­ing Scar­lett Johans­son, Mila Kunis, Christi­na Aguil­era and footage of tele­vi­sion sports reporter Erin Andrews in a Ten­nessee hotel room. Those cas­es result­ed in convictions.

How wide­spread the hack­ing of celebri­ties pho­tos was is not imme­di­ate­ly clear. Some of the images were quick­ly denounced as fakes.

Some cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts spec­u­lat­ed that hack­ers may have obtained a cache of pri­vate celebri­ty images by exploit­ing weak­ness­es in an online image-stor­ing platform.

“It is impor­tant for celebri­ties and the gen­er­al pub­lic to remem­ber that images and data no longer just reside on the device that cap­tured it,” secu­ri­ty researcher Ken West­in wrote in a blog post Mon­day. “Once images and oth­er data are uploaded to the cloud, it becomes much more dif­fi­cult to con­trol who has access to it, even if we think it is private.”

Pri­vate infor­ma­tion and images of celebri­ties are fre­quent tar­gets for hack­ers. Last year, a site post­ed cred­it reports, Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers and oth­er finan­cial info on celebri­ties, includ­ing Jay Z and his wife Bey­once, Mel Gib­son, Ash­ton Kutch­er and many others.

Johans­son, Kunis and Aguil­era were hacked by a Flori­da man, Christo­pher Chaney, who used pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion to hack into the email accounts of more than 50 peo­ple in the enter­tain­ment industry.

“I have been tru­ly humil­i­at­ed and embar­rassed,” Johans­son said in a tear­ful video­taped state­ment played in court at Chaney’s sen­tenc­ing in Decem­ber 2012.

“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,” Aguil­era wrote in a state­ment before Chaney’s sentencing.

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Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Raphael Sat­ter in Lon­don and Mae Ander­son in New York con­tributed to this report.