H5N1 federal courtroom has defendant George Garofano, 26, of North Branford, of violating the Computer Fraud together with Abuse Act, who had been arrested past times the FBI.
Garofano has admitted to illegally obtaining credentials for his victims' iCloud accounts using a phishing scheme, which eventually allowed him to bag personal information on his victims, including sensitive together with private photographs together with videos.
Among celebrities whose nude photographs were posted online dorsum inward 2014 are Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Kirsten Dunst, together with Kate Upton. Also, woman someone victims besides include American Olympic gilded medallist Misty May Treanor together with actors Alexandra Chando, Kelli Garner together with Lauren O’Neil.
Between Apr 2013 to Oct 2014, Garofano engaged inward sending phishing emails pretended to hold upwards from Apple safety squad to several celebrities, tricking them into providing their iCloud concern human relationship credentials, which they stole to access their accounts illegally.
"Garofano admitted that he sent emails to victims that appeared to hold upwards from safety accounts of Apple together with encouraged the victims to ship him their usernames together with passwords, or to come inward them on a third-party website, where he would afterwards shout out back them," the Justice Department said.Besides stealing victims' personal information, including sensitive together with private photographs together with videos, from their iCloud accounts using stolen credentials, Garofano, inward around instances, besides traded the stolen credentials, along alongside the materials he stole from the victims' accounts, alongside other individuals.
In a plea understanding signed Th inward U.S. of America District Court inward Los Angeles, Garofano agreed to plead guilty to 1 count of unauthorised access to a protected calculator to obtain information, facing upwards to five years inward prison.
Garofano is the 4th hacker charged inward connecter alongside the Celebgate incident. Emilio Herrera, 32, Edward Majerczyk, 28, together with Ryan Collins, 36, pleaded guilty terminal twelvemonth to beingness involved inward the celebrity photograph hack.
While Herrera is waiting for sentencing side past times side month, Majerczyk was sentenced to nine months inward prison theatre together with Collins was sentenced to eighteen months terminal year.
The investigation into the Celebgate scandal is beingness conducted past times the U.S. of America Federal Bureau of Investigation.
