According to newly unsealed court documents, the FBI raided the home of a tech in Chicago last fall and seized multiple computers, smart phones, and storage devices in their investigation of the hacking and leaking of celebrities’ personal photographs. The hacking and leaking of numerous celebrities’ private nude photos occurred through their iCloud accounts. The FBI was able to track the source of the hacking to Emilio Herrera through an IP address that was linked to him. He was the target of the federal warrant that was carried out about one month following the leaks of several famous celebrities including Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence.
The IP address was used to access close to 600 iCloud accounts. iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple that allows users to save their information over a network and can be accessed from anywhere. It does not require any physical hardware. As of last year, there were over 350 million iCloud accounts. Apple also was investigating the security breach of these users’ accounts as well. There are several people under investigation in addition to Herrera as the FBI has continued searches across the country.
Apple has reminded its users to create passwords that are difficult for users to guess and not use personal information. Be sure to include different numbers and characters as well as upper and lowercase letters. The more unique a password is, the tougher it can be for hackers to crack the code.
For more information, please visit CNN’s article here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/10/politics/celebrity-hack-search-warrant-emilio-hernandez/
