Local tech experts have advice for consumers worried about their private information after celebrity nude photos were stolen and posted online.
Both actress Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton were among those affected when the Apple iCloud system was hacked. Joey Marchy, product manager for Jacksonville software incubator Ignite, said the theft of explicit photos from the iCloud accounts could have been prevented if the victims had installed the two-factor authentication of their accounts.
When a user activates this feature on their iPhone, a special code is sent to their mobile device once they enter their password. This requires the person entering the password to also have access to the phone. Marchy said a hacker used a brute force password attack, which allowed the hacker to have infinite login attempts toward the victim’s iCloud account from afar.
“These celebrities are no different than you and I when it comes to technology. You would think there PR people have them and their devices locked down, but I would assert that they’re just normal people like you and me. And because it happened to them, it could happen to any of us,” said Marchy.
The images taken from the celebrities were posted to the Web-image sharing community known as 4Chan and have since spread across the web with sites such as Twitter and Reddit.
Apple has yet to say anything about how the attacks happened, but security researchers at FireEye examined the little evidence that has emerged.
TECH Tuesday is supported in part by funding from the UNF Continuing Education Logistics Program
