Hollywood nude photos spark worries over cloud data security

Nude photos of Hollywood stars, apparently obtained and distributed by hackers, are causing worries over the security of internet cloud storage sites.

Please join us on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/bangkokpostlearning

Nominee for Best Supporting Actress in "American Hustle" Jennifer Lawrence arrives on the red carpet for the 86th Academy Awards on March 2nd, 2014 in Hollywood, California. News that nude photos of her have been leaked by hackers has sparked worries that internet storage sites are not secure. AFP PHOTO / Robyn BECK

Apparent massive hack reveals nude pictures of stars

LOS ANGELES, AFP – Scandal rocked both Hollywood and the US tech industry Monday after an apparent massive hack of a cloud data service unleashed a torrent of intimate pictures of celebrities onto the Internet.

Anonymous posters to online message boards boasted of having nude images of scores of female stars including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and top model Kate Upton.

Early reports suggested hackers had "ripped" private images from tech giant Apple's iCloud online data storage, but the firm made no immediate comment and other services may have been targeted.

Some of the pictures had previously been circulated on message forums, and others appeared fake, but some major stars expressed outrage at a new breach and threatened legal action.

"This is a flagrant violation of privacy. The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence," Lawrence's agent told entertainment media.

Upton's lawyer, Lawrence Shore, told Us Magazine: "We intend to pursue anyone disseminating or duplicating these images to the fullest extent possible."

By late Sunday, Twitter had begun suspending accounts that linked to the Lawrence photos, tech news site Mashable reported.

Among the scores of celebrities whose pictures were allegedly stolen were Avril Lavigne, Hayden Panettiere and Hope Solo.

Former Nickelodeon star and singer Victoria Justice said the images claiming to show her nude were anything but the real deal.

"These so-called nudes of me are FAKE people." she tweeted.

A spokesperson for actress and pop star Ariana Grande told BuzzFeed that images said to be of her are "completely fake."

But horror movie actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead confirmed that some of her private pictures were in circulation and condemned those who stole them and who circulated them.

Horror movie actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead was not at all amused when nude photos of her, deleted from her computer long ago, were distributed online. Photo from twitter

"To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves," she tweeted.

"Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked."

Tech news site The Next Web reported what it said was evidence that hackers had found a weakness in Apple's "Find my iPhone" service, an app that tracks lost or stolen handsets.

Apple has patched the alleged hole, the report said, but not before news of it spread in the hacker community, perhaps allowing unscrupulous strangers to access private online data.

But other reports suggested that the pictures could have been collated from multiple sources, perhaps not including iCloud at all, and may have been gathered over several years.

The scandal posed a public relations challenge to tech companies, who have been marketing online storage like iCloud, DropBox or GoogleDrive as a safe haven for users' private data.

Several popular tech blogs marked the story by providing advice on storing private data safely, by using advanced encryption and two-step password identification or by keeping it offline.

สามารถฝึกอ่านออกเสียงและดูคำแปลได้ที่ : http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/430041/hollywood-nude-photos-spark-worries-over-cloud-data-security