iCloud Hack: Apple Investigates Celebrity Naked Photos Leak

Days before Apple Inc.'s scheduled announcement on the release of iPhone 6, proprietary service iCloud, an online file storage app exclusive for Apple users, was hacked leaking dozens if not hundreds of celebrity nude photos in the cyberspace.

Apple spokesman Natalie Kerris told Re/code that the company is currently "actively investigating" the cause of data breach that had broken into personal files of Hollywood personalities like Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, and model Kate Upton. A large number of risqué images was uploaded to the image-sharing platform called 4chan before it went viral on social networking sites.

The Next Web reports that according to GitHub, a web-based hosting service provider, iCloud was compromised through a feature called "Find My iPhone," which allows anyone to initiate an attack by a series of rapid password attempts until the hacker breaks into the target account.  iCloud was launched on October 2011 and two years after multiple security researchers reported instances of hacking, Apple introduced a two-step verification system that partners a "trusted" device into the account aside from the user password.

Clifford Neuman, director of the University of Southern California's Center for Computer Systems Security, added that the breach could have stemmed from Apple's security system of the victims' personal accounts.

Neuman told Bloomberg, "The data are leaving the devices that are in your possession and are now being stored on a server elsewhere.  For most things, that's probably a good thing but for things that are sensitive, that's a problem."  The Cupertino-based tech giant has not yet issued a statement as to the number of compromised accounts caused by the hacking.

Other celebrity accounts hacked include that of singer Rihanna, actresses Selena Gomez, Kirsten Dunst, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The hackers posed a promise to post more related pictures in the future, Time magazine reported.

In disappointment, Winstead tweeted: "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.  Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this."

Cumberland School of Law professor Woodrow Hartzog theorizes that another plausible reason of deliberate hacking is the method of retrieving forgotten passwords by answering a couple of questions about the account owner.  This especially makes celebrities vulnerable to attack because millions of people have access to their personal data such as life history, biographies, and news stories published online.