TheFappening

The celebrities’ world has been shook on August 2014 when the leaked iCloud photos of nude celebs- famously known as the “TheFappening” went viral worldwide!

It all began when a group of hackers infiltrated into iCloud accounts of hundreds of famous people in showbiz industry and stole their most intimate pictures which were out there for anyone to look at online. Amongst those hacked were Oscar Award winner Jennifer Lawrence, supermodel Kate Upton and other stars including Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Kirsten Dunst.

This was followed by massive media frenzy as images from the star-studded list hit the internet leaving Twitter and other social networks abuzz with reactions both astonished & outraged. Later investigations revealed that these celebrity accounts had been secured with default passwords or answers to security questions which made them vulnerable to cyber thefts. It is believed that 4chan played an important role in publicizing the stolen images after initially posting some of these on their website before it went viral across other channels including Reddit.

Following this a lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles against person(s) responsible for “The Fappening” and extradition requests followed for investigating this case internationally by major law enforcement agencies like FBI. On 30th July 2017 a Chicago resident ‘Edward Majerczyk’ pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection to this hack & was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment as part of a plea deal he had struck with US attorneys office.

This event attracted more hype than usual because most celebrities were victims were women including new wave comers like actress Elizabeth Winstead who tweeted her reaction right away calling it “A sexual violation” implying the level of outrage over such invasion of privacy amongst many celebrities worldwide. Although websites which played an active part in spreading these images were eventually taken down they still left a lasting impact forcing Apple & Cloud Computing Industry at large to rethink their security practices making sure nothing like this ever happened again!