Celebrity email hacker suspect arrested by FBI

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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Nubile female film stars will be breathing a sigh of relief today at the news that the FBI has arrested a man suspected of hacking into celebrity’s phones and emails accounts and stealing their invariably nude photos.

35-year-old Christopher Chaney, was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida according to an FBI statement. If found guilty of all 26 indictments, including accessing computer systems without authorisation, wire tapping and identity theft, Chaney could face a maximum of 121 years in prison.

Police believe that Chaney scoured the internet for information about his victims, which then helped him gain control of their email accounts. To me that sounds like a re-run of the same password reset trick which broke into Sarah Palin’s and Paris Hilton’s online accounts a few years back.

If you’re a hacker who has gained access to your email account, it can be simple to automatically…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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