Image Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor
A man has pleaded guilty to 2014’s hacking of celebrity accounts, dubbed “The Fappening” as a result of the NSFW nature of the photos, with Ryan Collins set to face between 18 months and five years in prison for his crimes.
The 36-year-old pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and unauthorized access to a protected computer, with it being confirmed that Apple were not to blame for the leaks, but that they were instead as a result of a phishing scheme that allowed him to illegally gain access to over 100 Apple and Google email accounts.
The leaks mainly targeted female celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kaley Cuoco, Anna Kendrick and Ariana Grande, with Lawrence in particular being singled out. She later said of the leaks: “It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting. Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this.”
But despite Collins pleading guilty to hacking the celebrities’ accounts, he was not charged with the uploading or distribution of them. He reportedly gained access to the full Apple iCloud backups 18 celebrities, which is where the images were stored, using a software program.
However, with there being many more celebrities who had their accounts compromised during that same time period, it seems likely that Collins wasn’t the only individual who was responsible, with someone else also seemingly having uploaded the obtained images to the Internet.
The leak prompted the FBI to launch an investigation, with the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office saying after Collins’ guilty plea: “We continue to see both celebrities and victims from all walks of life suffer the consequences of this crime and strongly encourage users of Internet-connected devices to strengthen passwords and to be skeptical when replying to emails asking for personal information.”
