Big guns called in: FBI investigating celebrity photo hack

The FBI is urgently investigating a massive hack of cloud data that unleashed a torrent of intimate pictures of dozens of celebrities across the Internet. Reports suggest hackers “ripped” private images from Apple’s iCloud online data storage, a potentially embarrassing - and damaging - breach for the California tech giant. Tech news site The Next Web reported what it said was evidence that hackers had found a weakness in Apple’s “Find my iPhone” service, an app that tracks lost or stolen handsets. Apple has patched the alleged hole, the report said, but not before news of it spread in the hacker community, perhaps allowing unscrupulous strangers to access private online data. But other reports suggested that the pictures could have been collated from multiple sources, perhaps not including iCloud at all, and may have been gathered over several years.

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

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times

Among the scores of celebrities whose pictures were allegedly stolen are Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, top model Kate Upton, singer Avril Lavigne, actress Hayden Panettiere and United States soccer star Hope Solo. Some of the celebrities, including ex-Nickelodean star Victoria Justice (pic above) and pop star Ariana Grande, said the images of them are fake. Others, such as horror movie actress Mary Elisabeth Winstead confirmed that some of her private pictures were in circulation and condemned those who stole them and who circulated them. She said she could only “imagine the creepy effort” that went into digging up and circulating the images “knowing those photos were deleted long ago”.

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.

Actress Mary Elisabeth Winstead, in a tweet