Yes, the private photos of dozens of female celebrities that were posted on 4chan.org this past weekend were obtained from Apple's iCloud. Has anyone seen any of these pictures? Out of curiosity, I tried to go to the website, but I guess everyone is curious and their servers are overloaded.
According to Apple, they are not to blame, since the relatively weak passwords were guessed by the hackers in question. However, the pictures were probably retrieved through Find My iPhone. This app allowed you to incorrectly enter your password an unlimited number of times, so hackers with the appropriate software can easily try out the entire dictionary to guess your password in no time.
After the damage was done, Apple has corrected this weakness and now only 20 attempts are possible before your Find My iPhone account gets blocked. Question is now, what other apps and smartphone operating systems have similar security flaws, not just for iPhone, but for other brands as well? We'll find out with the next security hack.
So, what's on your smart phone? It cracks me up whenever someone wants to show you a picture on their phone of whatever they had for dinner last night, or something else insignificant, and you try and grab to hold the phone yourself. "Oh, let me see that picture." The panic in their eyes, the awkward pulling back of the phone before you even saw the picture they wanted you to see. "I'm just playing." Yeah right, I know what's going on.
Five tips to help you out here:
- Post pictures that you want others to see on Facebook or simply send them via text. It's better that way, because most people will not be interested in your pictures anyways and they can choose to ignore them.
- Post pictures that you do not want others to see on a random website (not your Facebook account) and then deny it's you. It works for celebrities.
- Admit that you have incriminating pictures on your phone. Everyone wants to see those and the pleasure of denying your friends the satisfaction of seeing them will be empowering.
- Choose a password that anyone can guess. Once everyone has seen your pictures, you have nothing to hide and the truth will set you free.
- Don't take pictures.
Now, if these tips don't help, I do not know what to do.
Yako
