There is this developing story in Chicago in which a man was arrested by the FBI. The agents raided the houses as part of a long investigation that began when nude photos of famous celebs in the United States were published online last year in August 2014.
The celebs whose nude photos had been released include; Jennifer Lawrence, Anna Kendrick, Christina Hendricks and Kate Upton. The man who was arrested was later recognized as Emilio Herrera.
The FBI seized some computers in the house of this man in connection to the famous hack of iCloud system in the Apple devices known as “The Fappening Hack”. This hack led to photographs and videos belonging to more than 50 celebrities being published online in the month of august, last year.
This hack had led to an unspecified intrusion into the platform of iCloud. A report from Apple had claimed that iCloud accounts had been compromised by an attack on passwords, usernames and some security questions and not a break into overall Apple systems.
The investigation showed that these nude photos of the celebs were posted on an online forum and were later re-circulated through Reddit and other social networks.
A Special Agent in the FBI stated that someone in that house was believed to have used the computers and laptops that were used to start what has now been referred to as “CelebGate”.
The man was arrested after some ownership documents showed that he was the owner of the house that was raided by the FBI Agents in South Chicago.
After the leak, FBI agents started tracing the IP addresses and the iCloud accounts which led them to this house on the south side of Chicago. The investigation also traced occupants of the house who had access to emails and storage cloud storage accounts belonging to the celebrities for several months in 2014.
In October 2014, agents had gone to the house and some other houses where they confiscated many computers, hard drives, thumb drives, floppy disks and cell phones. Some reports have also claimed that floppy disks were the main storage devices that were being used in the hacking processes.
Some records from the courts indicated that some victims of the hack had told federal agents that they were barred temporarily from accessing their online accounts before the hack.
Some reported that before the hack they had received numerous scam messages from unknown sources before the hack. The FBI agents also said that some unique iCloud accounts had been accessed more than 3263 times and that most of these accounts belonged to the victims of the hack and this is what was quickly dubbed by the internet as “The Fappening”.
The agents also confirmed that they had not filed any charges on the man. They however refused to comment more about the investigation processes. The events of this investigation have led to mixed reaction among computer experts. Some experts have noted that it is very hard for someone to access the account of his or her targets using their own IP addresses.
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