On the celebrity data theft

Nik Cubrilovic has written one of the best pieces on the recent celebrity data theft. On the surface it’s easy to say that Apple’s iCloud security was breached and private photos stolen, but upon further inspection it’s very clear that there is a lot more going on. Let’s also not forget that interest in nude photos of celebrities has been around since forever.

What we see in the public with these hacking incidents seems to only be scratching the surface. There are entire communities and trading networks where the data that is stolen remains private and is rarely shared with the public. The networks are broken down horizontally with specific people carrying out specific roles, loosely organized across a large number of sites (both clearnet and darknet) with most organization and communication taking place in private (email, IM).