I have a feeling Celebrity Gate is due to an NSA worker collecting images and now selling them.

[joshcryer]

We know that the NSA is in every facet of internet traffic. Celebrities upload photos, they are easily searchable, then the worker in the NSA collects them, saves them to a personal folder hidden somewhere.

Snowden said that they were sharing personal photos of people at the NSA, that I had no reason to doubt, if they can intercept all communications that means that they can intercept all media.

Believe it, tomorrow, whatever the MSM decides to name it, the Celebrity Nudes hack is going to be the big news. And for good reason. I think it's the biggest privacy violation since the NSA hack, but this time, it is hitting celebrities, and therefore it will actually be on the news rather than the third page byline.

This is going to blow up in the NSA's face if I'm right. The Feds will figure out who is selling the pictures (they're using a bitcoin address and bitcoin is really a honeypot for illegal behavior since it literally stores a fully traceable transaction ledger by nature of the way it functions). And I don't think they'll be able to cover up that it was an NSA employee. Again, if I'm right.

Either way it's the biggest scandal to hit celebrities in the US in awhile, if not ever.

[temporary311]

1. Could also have been someone who worked at Apple.

These were apparently all lifted from iCloud or whatever.

[joshcryer]

3. I'm told that a lot had Android phones, so Dropbox, too.

Dropbox was affected badly by Heartbleed, so it could've been a regular hacker, but they would have had to have massive resources.

Apparently this guy shopped it to TMZ but TMZ didn't take the offer and he's now made $70,000+ on his bitcoin address.

Either way they're going down, whoever did it, and if it was an NSA employee, the blowback will be enormous.

[jaysunb]

2. Here ya go....

And btw, it WILL be big news and distraction for the next few days.

The "shiny object" always works like a charm.

[joshcryer]

4. At least you agreed with that part.

I admit it's a wild theory but the dump is massive, it's every top tier woman celebrity. Hard for me to see one hacker doing it without a lot of resources. There will be a lot of arrests and lawsuits over this, too, because every person who posts a "backup" of the images is going to be held liable.

[grasswire]

5. do you have a link to the original story?

I don't know anything about Celebrity Gate at this point.

Thanks.

[joshcryer]

6. The media hasn't picked up the magnitude yet.

Here's one story: http://observationdeck.io9.com/not-a-good-day-for-icloud-1629128840

Another: http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/jennifer-lawrence-kate-upton-ariana-grande-exposed-in-massive-nude-photo-leak-1201295180/

Better Buzzfeed link: http://gawker.com/internet-explodes-over-j-laws-alleged-hacked-nudes-1629093854

The media is talking about Jennifer Lawrence but it's actually affected dozens of high profile actresses and models.

[4b5f940728b232b034e4]

7. And hopefully blame will land right in Bush's lap...

since he is the one that started this NSA mess.

[postulater]

9. Bigger than Weinergate?

[joshcryer]

10. Far bigger. Over 30+ women have had their privacy violated.

Some are denying the pictures are genuine, to protect their reputation, but if even 10% of them come forward, we're looking at the largest hacking scandal in internet history.

Plus, Weiner was sending unsolicited pics to other people, this is non-consensual (to the public) pics released publicly. An entirely different matter.

[Laelth]

11. I find that highly unlikely.

If true, somebody is risking not only a good-paying job with government benefits but also prison time.

-Laelth

[joshcryer]

12. I'm even more convinced.

The original hacker sold the pics to other hackers via bitcoin. Those hackers then sold the pictures to the public, via bitcoin. That took some special care, if you ask me, they are now three ways removed from the hack.

I find it unlikely that iCloud or Dropbox would be hackable for the normal hacker, and think that there may have been an NSA backdoor; if you look at Lavabit, and how they were pressured to provide an NSA backdoor, it's not inconceivable that iCloud or Dropbox were not, as well.

Imagine, young, perverted, NSA employee mainly employed to look for evil terrorists. At their disposal is a search engine with anyone that they deem questionable. They look up a celebrity. Pow, results, lots of data dumped. Then they do it again and again and again, for weeks, then stop.

They quit the NSA shortly thereafter, and then go on to do whatever else, but they still have a several GB dump of celebrity data. What do they do with it? They're NSA. They know if they go direct, they're fucked, but if they sell it to other hackers with bitcoin attacks, they can be several ways removed. There. Done. If one guy got 70k for pics, what, then, might we expect of the original hacker? 700k? Plausible.

[Laelth]

13. It's certainly possible.

Thanks for the thread. This is a big deal.

-Laelth

[joshcryer]

14. All I know is one guy made $70,000+ so far.

And from what I can tell he's not the original hacker, he was just someone who bought the pics via bitcoin for a price. And yeah, before I pass out, this will be todays news. It'll be interesting to log in to all the various takes on it.

[randome]

15. Good God, you really think the NSA is better at hacking than 20-somethings with time on their hands?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[joshcryer]

16. You don't?

[randome]

17. They couldn't even stop Snowden from copying sensitive documents. From a Sharepoint site!

The NSA is not some all-powerful Godzilla-like organization.

Despite what Snowden wants us to believe.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[Rassah]

18. It's actually pretty much impossible to trace bitcoin...

... if you know what you're doing. Common method is to use a centralized mixer service, where everyone deposits their bitcoins into a single huge pot through an anonymous connection (Edward Snowden said even CIA can't break Tor other than at the nodes where it gets to the clearweb, but such mixers exist entirely in dark web). Then after the coins are sent around through a bunch of internal addresses (tumbled) they are sent back to various people who made deposits, in a way where no one gets the same coins they deposited, or even coins that are linked to their old ones through any transactions. That was there is no way to tell who got who's coins. A newer system that will eventually be implemented by default is called CoinJoin, and doesn't even rely on such a pool (that can run away with everyone's money at any time). In that system, everyone who wants to send money somewhere announces their intention and creates a transaction, and everyone who wants to send money at the same time joins their transaction by adding their own input and output addresses. Once enough people join, everyone verifies that in this massive single transaction their own money is going where they want it to go, and adds their own signature. This bulk transaction is only considered valid by the network if everyone signs, so there is no way for anyone to steal funds, since the most anyone can do is not sign, making everyone else start another CoinJoin transaction. Once everyone verifies and signs, the transaction is confirmed, and everyone's coins are all sent at the same time, and, again, you have no idea who's coins went where, or which received coins came from where.

Point is, the guys selling these pics likely knew what they were doing, and just looking at the bitcoin transaction ledger won't help. They'll have to use the good ol' method of tracing IP numbers, looking for anyone bragging about their skills, spying on private communications, etc.

[conservaphobe]

19. There are a number of hackers involved.

A lot of the content has been out there in the malicious hacker circles for quite some time. You could only buy into the circle by sharing original content.

And they've been pretty good at keeping it a secret, trading them on the deep web. That is until someone blew the whole thing wide open with their little stunt on 4chan and Reddit. Someone got sloppy. Another got greedy.

Right now the whole thing is one big clusterfuck and more will be revealed once the smoke clears.