14 DAY TRIAL // An Israeli hacker who was arrested in January for stealing work of Madonna that was still to be polished for release on her next album, “Rebel Heart,” was indicted in Tel Aviv last week.
Adi Lederman, 39, is accused of hacking into the cloud storage accounts of three individuals (Sara Zambrano, Angie Teo and Kevin Antunes) that work with the artist and have access to unreleased music files.
Financial gain seems to be the goal
According to the court document obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Lederman also pilfered an office email account called “osearyoffice,” suggesting that it was used by Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary.
The hacker was arrested after a month of investigative efforts from a private investigation company, the FBI and the cyber-crime unit of Lahav 433, Israel’s equivalent for the FBI that investigates national crimes.
The data obtained illegally was sold to different third-parties for amounts between several tens of dollars and $1,000 / €890, and sometimes even more, as per the court documents.
It is unclear how the hacker managed to gain access to the private cloud storage accounts, but spear-phishing is used in most such cases. The victim receives a fraudulent email containing a link to a fake log-in page for the service, which captures the credentials and sends them to the attacker.
Unless two-factor authentication (2FA) is supported and enabled, the perpetrator has unfettered access to the account based on the stolen username and password.
Hacker tried to erase some incriminating evidence
Lederman has been charged with computer trespassing, prohibited secret monitoring and additional computer trespassing, copyright infringement and obstructing investigation.
The last accusation has been formulated on the fact that the defendant contacted one of his buyers, identified as Craig Lunti, via email and asked him to delete all correspondence between them since authorities would initiate an investigation into the matter.
Some of the songs Lederman managed to steal were leaked to different websites last year, which would spoil the release of the album, scheduled for March 6.
Upon the arrest, the police seized multiple items from Lederman’s house, all of them believed to be stolen material from other artists.