Photos of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, left, and supermodel Kate Upton were among dozens of sexually explicit images of public figures leaked online Aug. 31. Photo: Getty images Hundreds of intimate photos of celebrities leaked online over the weekend may have been the result of an online community of hackers who swap such photos stolen from the personal accounts of various public figures.
The massive cache of illicit photos started appearing on 4Chan, Reddit and Imgur on Sunday and included several A-list celebrities such as actress Jennifer Lawrence and swimsuit model Kate Upton. While the source of the photos is still unknown, there are rumours of an underground “trading ring” that people can only join by contributing original photos and videos obtained by breaking into the devices and emails of celebrities.
As one message on the infamous 4Chan message boards suggested, the “n00d-trading ring” has been around for years, accessible only to a select few on what is known as the Deep Web, parts of the internet only accessible through the Tor anonymity software. Those who wanted to join the secret club apparently had to contribute their own, original stolen photos of celebrities to “buy in.”
A screencap of a 4Chan post regarding the massive leak of intimate images of various celebrities, describing an underground “trading ring” for such images.
If true, the existence of such a longstanding online cabal would mean it wasn’t a single flaw in Apple’s iCloud back-up service that led to the breach, but rather a long process of breaking into celebrities’ private accounts by a number of different people. This weekend’s leak of those images and videos likely started with a single person but soon came to include multiple leakers with access to some or all of the secret stash of stolen images, several of which have solicited Bitcoin donations for sharing the material.
Since the initial news of the leaks, some of the affected celebrities have issued warnings and expressed their anger at the invasion of privacy. A publicist for Lawrence has threatened legal action against those responsible.
“This is a flagrant violation of privacy,” a rep told US Weekly. “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”
Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was the victim of six stolen photos she believed long deleted, denigrated the thieves on Twitter for the “creepy effort” it must have taken to obtain the images.
Many others have stayed silent or issued denials the images are of them. Singer Ariana Grande, for example, has said the images purportedly of her are “completely fake.”
The image-hosting site Imgur, where many of the stolen photos first appeared, has taken down many of the posts and is continuing to closely police new uploads, although the photos are still widely available through cloud hosting services like Dropbox and Google Drive, hosted on blogging platforms like Blogspot, and as downloads on The Pirate Bay torrent site.
The initial waves of images have stopped but the list of victims allegedly includes dozens more, according to a post on 4Chan.
Meanwhile, a new message board has appeared on Reddit specifically to track and share the sexually explicit images. Dubbed The Fappening — “fapping” is online slang for masturbation — the new subreddit boasts almost 125,000 subscribers and has been feverishly updated with each new leak. The enthusiasm for the photos and videos stolen from unsuspecting public figures is seemingly at odds with the Reddit community’s general commitment to privacy, at least in relation to spying by the NSA and other intelligence organizations. In fact, the only warning about privacy refers to the privacy of those who stole the images, not the people affected.
The top post on r/TheFappening reads: “DO NOT POST ANY INFORMATION, TRUE OR FALSE, ABOUT THE IDENTITY OF THE PERSON(S) LEAKING THESE PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEOS. IF YOU DO THAT YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THIS SUBREDDIT.”
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