I hacked my friend and what happened next will amaze you
Over on BGR, the methodology of the so-called "hack" was repeatedly called into question. The facts appear to suggest that a combination of guesswork and brute force password cracking was responsible for the data going public, rather than any actual hacker doing any actual hacking.
Reader Fiddle Castro has been doing his own amateur investigation and "hacked" his friend's iPhone. He tells us: "It is so easy for anyone's iCloud account to be hacked that I managed to find the answers to a friend's account security questions within 30 minutes. From here, I could have easily accessed everything on his iCloud — which includes iMessages, contacts, images and videos."
He said of his methods: "Since he is my friend, I already knew one of the answers, but I searched online for this information, and it was publicly available — so anybody could have accessed it. Answers to both security questions were found on social media."
Answers to the old pet/school/teacher security questions are already out there for most of us, even if it means some "hacker" has to go to the effort of digging out and reading through our old MySpace accounts.
Reader Lucascott replied, asking if this really can be described as being Apple's fault, asking: "Apple can't prevent stupid passwords or easy to find security questions. You really want them to fix stupid?"
To which Me Fiddle replied with: "Nope, it's the fact that Apple's dumb security questions mean iCloud is VERY easy to hack. And THAT is Apple's 100% fault."
How would you like it if I breathed your air?
And of course, any celebrity or nudity scandal has to make the Daily Mail, where reader JMD provided an unexpected voice of reason in response to someone suggesting the hacked celebs were "dumb" for using a piece of technology as it is supposed to be used.
JMD sensibly explained: "It doesn't just apply to naked photos. Photos of your family, children, holidays, videos of the same. Are you dumb for storing them as well? Your email address, the one you use here and the passwords to go with it. We're all encouraged to go 'paperless'. Almost everything is done online. Banking, bills, shopping. Every single person who is connected to the internet can be a target and can be hacked and can be a victim of a crime."
And commenter Bonza Mate thinks no one should blame the hackees for being hacked, posting: "When did we start living in a world where the victim gets blamed for a crime being committed? Using your theory I could climb break into your house to steal your valuables. It would be your fault for keeping them in your house. How about I steal your car as you've left it outside?"
