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Hacker who stole nude celebrity photos sentenced to 18 month

After agreeing to plead guilty to charges earlier this year, Ryan Collins, the hacker who ran a two-year long phishing scheme that allowed him to steal sensitive information from celebrities has been handed sentenced to 18-months in prison.

Collins was found guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse act after admitting that he had run a two-year long phishing scam. The hacker will now serve 18-months behind bars in a federal prison.

The scam tricked over 100 celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, and Avril Lavigne into giving Collins access to their personal Apple and Google accounts.

“From November 2012 until the beginning of September 2014, Collins engaged in a sophisticated phishing scheme to obtain usernames and passwords for his victims. He sent e-mails to victims that appeared to be from Apple or Google and asked victims to provide their usernames and passwords,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

The case against the hacker forms part of a much larger investigation into the leak of nude celebrity photos in September 2014. While Collins has been found guilty of stealing photos and videos, investigators say that there is no evidence that the hacker actually leaked, shared or uploaded anything he stole.

The Department of Justice goes on to report that Collins had infiltrated as many as 50 Apple iCloud accounts and 72 Gmail accounts as a result of his phishing scam.

[Via – The Guardian] [Image – CC SA BY 2.0 hackNY.org]

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