You are close anon. Many/most of the fappening "hacks" were done by exploiting a bit of social engineering and password resets. It was quite easy to do. No NSA tech type stuff involved. A market for "hacked" celeb photos emerged. The people(there were at least dozens) who were adept at this almost definitely used the same methodology on well known political/media types of accounts who were below the A+ tier.
This shit is out there. I don't recommend looking for it. My personal belief is that the bulk of this material has found its way into assange's insurance file and ultimately led to him taking refuge in the ecuadorean embassy after he reported it to authorities(publishing it is criminal in any jurisdiction in the world).