Slashdot Mirror
Hacker Behind Leaked Nude Celebrity Photos Gets 10 Years
wiredmikey writes "A U.S. judge sentenced a computer hacker to 10 years in prison on Monday for breaking into the email accounts of celebrities and stealing private photos. The hacker accessed the personal email accounts and devices of stars including Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead, among dozens of other people he hacked. The hackers arrest in October 2011 stemmed from an 11-month investigation into the hacking of over 50 entertainment industry names, many of them young female stars. Hacked pictures of Johansson showed her in a state of undress in a domestic setting. Aguilera's computer was hacked in December 2010, when racy photos of her also hit the Internet. Mila Kunis' cell phone was hacked in September that year with photos of her, including one in a bathtub, spread online. According to the FBI, the hacker used open-source, public information to try to guess a celebrity's email password, and then would breach the account."
Well, he'll be going to a real prison with real criminals -- Slashdot's whinging about what is a hacker, a cracker, or a script kiddie is irrelevant.
He's hardly a criminal mastermind, but what he did was still illegal.
As illegal as breaking and entering into someone's home and stealing photos from a bedroom safe. Good to hear that the court system sees hacking for the serious crime it really is. Someone with a talent for computing shouldn't be given free license to break into someone elses devices and steal, and then provide some lame 'War Games' "it was just some innocent hacking" defense. 10 years will give him time to wonder if maybe he shouldn't play like some kind of untouchable omnipotent God at a keyboard. I look forward to hearing of more tough sentences in the future.
Further proof celebs are fucking dumb. This guy wasn't a "real hacker".
On the contrary, guessing a password is a truly classic hack. What is more of a "real hack" from your perspective? Downloading and running a cracking script? To guess a person's password from information publicly available about them is a prime example of security-oriented thinking.
The best hacks are tailored precisely to the circumstances.