'X-Men Apocalypse' - Global Fan Screening - Red Carpet Arrivals (Photo : Getty Images)
Hackers of celebrity nude photos are falling one by one. Just days after “Crafty Cockney” stole 3,000 pictures of Pippa Middleton from her iCloud account, including the naked photos of Middleton’s boyfriend, James Matthews, the man was arrested by Scotland Yard.
Reuters reported that on Tuesday, 29-year-old Edward Majerczyk, pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Chicago to one felony charge of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. He was the hacker of email accounts of high-profile celebrities such as actress Jennifer Lawrence, in a cyber scandal dubbed as the Fappening.
Court documents did not name victims, but the celebrities whose emails were hacked have addressed the issue publicly. Besides the “Hunger Games” star, other victims include actress Kirsten Dunst and U.S. soccer player Hope Solo.
Majerczyk told U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras that he deliberately targeted celebrities by going through their personal information and downloading “sensitive images.” He did it for his personal satisfaction and enjoyment, said Thomas Needham, the hacker’s lawyer.
Needham told Kocoras there was no evidence of any effort by the hacker to sell or disseminate the stolen images, reported Techeye.
He used a phishing scheme to gain access, illegally, to over 300 Apple iCloud and Google gmail accounts of the celebrities to get photos and other private information from November 2013 through August 2014. The office of Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick for the Northern District of Illinois, in an email, said it plans to seek a nine-month prison term for the hacker. Majerczyk is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 10.
