Back in September 2014, an egregious breach of privacy was committed against a number of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kirsten Dunst, with their nude photos leaked from their iClouds and onto the web. Dubbed “The Fappening” (still gross), it raised a lot of questions about ethics, privacy, and the rise of a new sort of sex crime. Back in May, Pennsylvania man Ryan Collins plead guilty to one count of gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, in which he hacked numerous women’s accounts, including some of the affected celebrities.
Now, according to Variety, a second man will plead guilty to the hacks. Edward Majerczyk, a 28-year-old Chicago resident, faces five years in prison for hacking into over 300 iCloud and Gmail accounts (including 30 belonging to celebrities) according to federal prosecutors, although a plea deal could bring that down to 6 to 12 months.
While Majerczyk and Collins were both involved in the mass leak from 2014, they claim to have been working independently. In the plea agreement, Makerczyk laid out how he managed to gain so much information, and his answer will make you never want to click on another email ever again.
According to the plea agreement, Majerczyk would send emails from accounts like “appleprivacysecurity@icloud.com” or “appleprivacy@icloud.com.” Thinking the emails were legitimate, the victims would click on the links and type in their usernames and passwords. (via)
Additionally, neither men were the ones to actually post the images to the web, so the search for more involved parties is ongoing. Still, his sentencing is another step towards getting a small bit of justice for the wronged parties.
(Via Variety)