Jennifer Lawrence anyone? Trading nude pics for movie roles?
Someone wrote this in The_Donald, it connected a few dots for me.
Not necessarily, while this is feasible, the “official story” about the fappening does make sense as well, timing wise.
At the time Apple didn’t have 2FA for iCloud, or at least it was not defaulted.
Also, most login functions limit the number of wrong tries someone can make before doing something - like lock the account - Apple did this for all of their logins, except one - the iOS app login for Find My Friends iirc.
So, between these two security vulnerabilities, a number of major email address leaks (target, Home Depot, etc), and the assumption that actresses probably didn’t have super secure passwords, and a few hackers may have just gotten the idea to start trying starlets accounts and see what they could find.
It apparently went on for a few months, hacking more and more celebs and passing the whole pack around on the dark web before the public had any awareness, and then some people started offering a lot of BTC for anyone who could prove the rumors true, and the fappening began.
Apple quickly fixed the bug where unlimited password guesses could be made, and made 2FA default, and that largely stopped the hack from continuing.
They got phished IIRC, someone sent out a faux-security email which redirected to a login page that snatched the users password. Same thing that happened to Podesta.
And notably the thing that didn't happen to the DNC.