Celebgate | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

George Garofano (left) The fourth celebrity hacker—who was charged earlier this year with hacking into over 250 Apple iCloud accounts belonged to Jennifer Lawrence and other Hollywood celebrities—has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Earlier this year, George Garofano, 26, of North Branford, admitted to illegally obtaining credentials of his victims' iCloud accounts using a phishing scheme, carried out from April 2013 to October 2014, in which he posed as a member of Apple's security team and tricked victims into revealing their iCloud credentials. Using stolen credentials, Garofano then managed to steal victims' personal information, including their sensitive and intimate photographs and videos, from their iCloud accounts, and then leaked them on online forums, like 4Chan. Among the victims were Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian , Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton, American Olympic gold medallist Misty May Treanor and actors Alexandra Chando, Kelli Garner and

The hacker who stole photographs of female celebrities two years ago in a massive data breach — famous as " The Fappening " or "Celebgate" scandal — has finally been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, authorities said on Thursday. 36-year-old Lancaster, Pennsylvania man Ryan Collins was arrested in March and charged with hacking into "at least 50 iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts," most of which owned by Hollywood stars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, and Kate Upton. Now, a judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday sentenced Collins to 18 months in federal prison after violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Here's How Collins Stole Celebrities' Photos Federal prosecutors said Collins ran phishing scheme between November 2012 and September 2014 and hijacked more than 100 people using fake emails disguised as official notifications from Google and Apple, asking victims for their account credentials.

The  ransomware industry surged in 2023  as it saw an alarming 55.5% increase in victims worldwide, reaching a staggering 5,070.  But 2024 is starting off showing a very different picture.  While the numbers skyrocketed in Q4 2023 with 1309 cases, in Q1 2024, the ransomware industry was down to 1,048 cases. This is a 22% decrease in ransomware attacks compared to Q4 2023. Figure 1: Victims per quarter There could be several reasons for this significant drop.  Reason 1: The Law Enforcement Intervention Firstly, law enforcement has upped the ante in 2024 with actions against both LockBit and ALPHV. The LockBit Arrests In February, an international operation named "Operation Cronos" culminated in the arrest of at least three associates of the infamous LockBit ransomware syndicate in Poland and Ukraine.  Law enforcement from multiple countries collaborated to take down LockBit's infrastructure. This included seizing their dark web domains and gaining access to their backend sys

A second man has pleaded guilty for his role in ' The Fappening ' breach of 2014, in which the Internet was flooded with thousands of photographs of popular celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence , Kim Kardashian , Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst. Edward Majerczyk (28) of Chicago, Illinois agreed to plead guilty last Friday to hacking into the Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts of more than 300 victims, including 30 celebrities, between November 2013 and August 2014, federal prosecutors said. Like Ryan Collins , Majerczyk used phishing scheme to trick celebrities into entering their account credentials into bogus 'security' sites and then accessed private and photographs and videos of celebrities. The hackers then leaked hundreds of thousands of explicit photos of Hollywood actresses on the Internet in September 2014 that later known as The Fappening (or 'Celebgate') breach. "This defendant not only hacked into email accounts — he hacked into his