Apple has stated that although it’s investigating how hackers managed to procure private photos of multiple celebrities from their iCloud accounts, the service itself was not to blame. Apple claimed that iCloud wasn’t breached and the accounts of the celebrities in question had been breached due to "a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions."
Private photographs of multiple female celebrities including actors Jennifer Lawrence and Kaley Cuoco, model, Kate Upton and singer, Rihanna were procured by the hackers from their iCloud accounts last Sunday. Once set up, photos taken with any iDevice are synced automatically with iCloud so that users can view those photos on any other iDevice they own. Logging into iCloud is as simple as keying in a username and password although Apple claims that the account is automatically locked after multiple incorrect inputs.
This hack comes at particularly inopportune moment for Apple, just when the company is on the verge of revealing its new iPhone and a version update to iOS, its mobile OS, in the form of iOS 8. Apple has designed iOS 8 to be more connected with its cloud service and will be introducing iCloud Drive, its version of Dropbox, and CloudKit, a repository of developer tools that will let them develop apps which can extensively rely on iCloud. Even if Apple has accurately identified the hacks as being a result of a targeted, brute force approach, it will hurt the users’ confidence in iCloud and apps and services that rely on iCloud.
Apple is expected to reveal the new iPhone in an event on September 9.
Source: Wall Street Journal