14 DAY TRIAL // A 35-year-old man from Florida was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives, being suspected to be the one that hacked a large number of devices belonging to Hollywood celebrities.
According to Wired, Christina Aguilera, Mila Kunis, Simone Harouche, Scarlett Johansson and Renee Olstead are just a few of the 50 victims the Feds believe he targeted.
The suspect, Christopher Chaney, seems to have used nicknames such as trainreqsuckswhat, anonygrrl or jaxjaguars911 in his operations which lead to the theft of compromising photographs which featured members of the entertainment industry.
Operation Hackerazzi, which was launched to catch cyber masterminds such as Chaney, resulted in his arrest and even though it's not clearly stated if the pictures were sold or just handed out to celebrity blogs, the 26 counts he is charged with could translate into a 121 years in prison sentence.
The accused managed to break into the email accounts of stars by using information from the internet to guess or to reset their passwords. In many cases he didn't settle with what he'd find so he rerouted all the messages received by the victims to an account he controlled.
As Graham Cluley points out, celebrities deserve their privacy and acts like this should not happen, but an important lesson can be learned by all of us.
Make sure to properly protect your account by following some of the classic advices:
– always use a strong password that's long and not a word from the dictionary, especially not information that relates to your private life (birth dates, pet names); – beware of phishing campaigns that launch false warnings or promise substantial gains; – account-protecting security questions are also important, try not to use simple things such as the names of your parrents; – mobile phones are especially targeted so make sure to deploy a proper security measure that will protect your assets.