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."
What is Open Source information? The OSI foundation doesn't seem to be doing a good job of enforcing the trademark of the term Open Source. I hear and see it used in many ways in which it should not be and the term has been grossly eroded in meaning over the past decade.
Pics or it didn't happen.
did Rupert Murdoch and his son get?
10 years is a ridiculous amount of time to be in prison for something like this. Child molesters and murderers get less time.
Why does it seem there is one set of rules for the little people and another set for big business?
"HSBC executives brushed off complaints from other bank employees, so that the problems persisted for eight years, the report says.
In addition, some HSBC bank affiliates skirted U.S. government bans against financial transactions with Iran and other countries, according to the report. And HSBC’s U.S. division provided money and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh believed to have helped fund Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the report said."
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1227431--hsbc-laundered-billions-of-dollars-for-mexican-drug-cartels-senate-investigation-finds
"The penalty includes a five-year agreement with the US department of justice under which the bank will install an independent monitor to assess reformed internal controls. The bank's top executives will defer part of their bonuses for the whole of the five-year period, while bonuses have been clawed back from a number of former and current executives, including those in the US directly involved at the time."
These celebrities should open source their privates and make money by selling support contracts.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Seriously. The guy did deserve to go to jail, but 121 years?!!! And he pleaded guilty to get "just" 10 years? It is no surprise U.S. prisons are full and U.S. has the highest number of prisoners per capita in the World...
is it still considered a "hack" when all the attacker did was guess the password from common (public domain) knowledge??
Yes, much like a golf cart is still considered a vehicle.
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.
I consider the real sickness here is the wierdness that is the mind of apparently most Hollywood stars.
I mean why do they apparently all carry nude pictures of themselves on their phones? Especially even knowing that phones can be hacked.
I can smell the Paris Hilton effect in action.... There is no such thing as bad publicity.
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.
As illegal as breaking and entering into someone's home and stealing photos from a bedroom safe
I don't think it's as illegal as that. If someone breaks into your home and goes into your bedroom, that's scary not just because they stole your photos or money, but they could have easily run into someone and had to decide -- do I attack this person, do I turn this burglary into a rape, do I leave witnesses, etc.
I just looked up common sentences for burglary, and found an article that discusses burglary laws in New York (http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary-penalties-and-sentencing.html ). As I suspected, the main differences between degrees of burglary are whether it was a dwelling where someone lives and whether a weapon was involved. Both combined is first degree. One or the other is second degree. Neither (breaking into a store for instance) is third degree with a maximum sentence of 7 years. Hacking a phone should be the LEAST serious of any of those, really a fourth degree.
The reality is that hacking isn't that bad.
most sites have these watermarked or censored with black bars
- REDACTEDYou are correct. The article states that he could have gotten 121 years if he'd been convicted on all 26 counts he was indited for. Real world third degree burglary adds up too when you've broken into a couple dozen stores. If the information in the article is correct, it looks like the average maximum sentence for each indictment is around 4.5 years, so 2.5 years less than you say for third degree burglary. It's just that he did it lots and lots of times. Sounds like he got off pretty easy, about 3 months per count.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Stop blaming the victim. I've heard this so often, I'm finally going to snap. (Nothing personal.)
Make up your mind whether IT administration is easy or hard.
If it's easy, then the IT profession is perpetrating a massive scam and collecting fat paychecks for what is basically an easy job. I don't believe that, and I do not think you will find many people on Slashdot who support that position.
On the other hand, if IT is hard, then it's not fair to condemn non-professionals from being unable to do it. Rather than calling people "stupid" for not knowing things that we take for granted, we could actually try to promote public awareness and give people constructive advice.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Yes but.... if he broke into her home, stole physical photos, and released them.... most people would easily consider it as much, if not more, of a violation.... but would he ever face nearly the jail time for that as he did for this? I doubt it strongly.
10 years is a fucking joke. Bankers destroyed the world economy and no one, except Iceland, charged any of them. There is no justice.
If you can break into my car and make exact copies of the stuff inside without depriving me of those things, and then put the window back exactly as you found it - have at it.
Thanks, where do you park?
I would still be committing the crime of b&e, breaking and entering, for which you would have the legal right to prosecute me for. First I'd need to obtain a notarized statement from you saying you allow me to do these things. Without that statement from you, it'd still be illegal.
And the pics and videos of you and your wife/girlfriend in various stages of undress (performing certain acts) that I copied from your car and posted them on the internet, that's okay with you too, right? Just asking.