iPhone chaos as 620,000 iCloud photos and videos STOLEN by hacker looking for for nude pictures

iPhone chaos as 620,000 iCloud photos and videos STOLEN by a hacker looking for nude pictures of young women.

A hacker from California gained access to thousands of Apple iCloud accounts looking for naked photos of young women by purporting to be an Apple support staff team member.

Hao Kuo Chi of La Puente, Los Angeles, harvested hundreds of thousands of images and videos in a plot to steal and share nudes, US federal authorities said.

Chi has now agreed to plead guilty to four charges, including conspiracy to gain unauthorised access to a computer, court records show.

The hacker, who goes by David, admitted that he impersonated Apple customer support staff in emails that tricked unsuspecting victims into providing him with their Apple IDs and passwords.

He gained unauthorised access to photos and videos of at least 306 victims across the country, most of them young women. He acknowledged all the charges in his plea agreement with federal prosecutors in a Tampa, Florida Court.

Chi said he hacked into the accounts of about 200 of the victims at the request of people he met online. Using the moniker “icloudripper4you,” Chi marketed himself as capable of breaking into iCloud accounts to steal photos and videos, he admitted in his statement.

He also acknowledged in court papers that he and his unnamed co-conspirators used a foreign encrypted email service to communicate with each other anonymously. When they came across nude photos and videos stored in victims’ iCloud accounts, they called them “wins,” which they collected and shared with one another.

‘Big Brother’ is watching

Apple is facing criticism from privacy advocates over its plan to scan iPhone photos that customers store on iCloud to flag images of child sexual abuse for potential reporting to law enforcement. The advocates say it risks opening yet another new avenue for government surveillance of iPhone users worldwide.

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