BY ANTHONY MCCARTNEY
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The FBI said Monday it was addressing allegations
that online accounts of several celebrities, including Oscar-winner
Jennifer Lawrence, had been hacked, leading to the posting of their nude
photographs online.
The agency did not say what actions it was taking to investigate who
was responsible for posting naked photos of Lawrence and other stars.
Apple said Monday it was looking into whether its online photo-sharing
service had been hacked to obtain the intimate images.
Lawrence, a three-time Oscar nominee who won for her role in "Silver
Linings Playbook," contacted authorities after the images began
appearing Sunday.
Naked images purporting to be of other female stars were also posted,
although the authenticity of many couldn't be confirmed. The source of
the leak was unclear.
"This is a flagrant violation of privacy," Lawrence's publicist Liz
Mahoney wrote in a statement. "The authorities have been contacted and
will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence."
The FBI said it was "aware of the allegations concerning computer
intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile
individuals, and is addressing the matter."
"Any further comment would be inappropriate at this time," spokeswoman Laura Eimiller wrote in a statement.
Apple Inc. spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said the company was
investigating whether any iCloud accounts had been tampered with, but
she did not give any further details.
"We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report," she said.
Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead also confirmed that nude photos of her were posted online.
"To those of you looking at photos I took with my husband years ago
in the privacy of our home, hope you feel great about yourselves,"
Winstead posted on Twitter. Winstead, who starred in "Final Destination
3" and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," wrote that she thought the
images had been destroyed.
"Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this," Winstead wrote.
The FBI has investigated previous leaks of nude celebrity images,
including leaks involving Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina
Aguilera and footage of television sports reporter Erin Andrews in a
Tennessee hotel room. Those cases resulted in convictions.
How widespread the hacking of celebrities photos was is not
immediately clear. Some of the images were quickly denounced as fakes.
Some cybersecurity experts speculated that hackers may have obtained a
cache of private celebrity images by exploiting weaknesses in an online
image-storing platform.
"It is important for celebrities and the general public to remember
that images and data no longer just reside on the device that captured
it," security researcher Ken Westin wrote in a blog post Monday. "Once
images and other data are uploaded to the cloud, it becomes much more
difficult to control who has access to it, even if we think it is
private."
Private information and images of celebrities are frequent targets
for hackers. Last year, a site posted credit reports, Social Security
numbers and other financial info on celebrities, including Jay Z and his
wife Beyonce, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher and many others.
Johansson, Kunis and Aguilera were hacked by a Florida man,
Christopher Chaney, who used publicly available information to hack into
the email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment
industry.
"I have been truly humiliated and embarrassed," Johansson said in a
tearful videotaped statement played in court at Chaney's sentencing in
December 2012.
"That feeling of security can never be given back and there is no
compensation that can restore the feeling one has from such a large
invasion of privacy," Aguilera wrote in a statement before Chaney's
sentencing.
