Celebrities' nude photos, including McKayla Maroney and Misty May-Treanor, removed from some websitesPin ItMore Galleries
Among those allegedly hacked was Olympic champion gymnast McKayla Maroney of Orange County, whose attorneys said she was underage in several photos taken of her. Here, Maroney poses with a fan in 2012 at Dodger Stadium.
FILE: MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
LOS ANGELES As federal investigators worked Tuesday to determine who stole and posted nude photos of several female celebrities online, the images continued to be removed from various sites.
Among those allegedly hacked was Olympic champion gymnast McKayla Maroney of Orange County, whose attorneys said she was underage in several photos taken of her. Fellow Orange County Olympian Misty May-Treanor was among the others whose photos were posted.
Copyright complaints apparently prompted the removal of images from sharing site Imgur.com and rendered links on the social networking site Reddit inoperable in what experts call an online version of whack-a-mole that will never fully scrub the intimate photos of Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and other stars from the Internet.
Apple said Tuesday that its engineers have determined that hackers breached individual accounts, but didnt obtain general access to a pair of its services, iCloud and Find my iPhone.
The FBI offered no details Tuesday on its efforts to identify the people responsible for stealing the images and posting them, but said on Monday that the agency was aware of the breach and was addressing the matter. Previous investigations have involved the use of search warrants and digital forensics to determine how hackers obtained everything from Paris Hiltons contact list to nude photos of actresses Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis.
Maroney, who turned 18 last December, initially tweeted that the nude and scantily clad photos purportedly of her were fake. (T)he fake photos of me are crazy!! was trying to rise above it all, and not give the creator, Maroney wrote.
In a letter to Porn.com, which reposted the photos, Maroneys attorneys, however, said she was underage in several of the photos and demanded they be taken down immediately, according to TMZ. The website complied with the request. An attorney for Maroney also sent letters to several websites claiming that Maroney owns the copyright to the photos.
Lawrence, a three-time Oscar nominee who won for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, contacted authorities after the images began appearing Sunday. By Tuesday, a Reddit thread that had been compiling links to images of nude photos of Lawrence and other celebrities had been disabled due to a copyright claim. Users reported difficulty finding working links to the images on other sites, although they remained active on sites that specialize in online piracy.
Representatives of Twitter, Reddit and Imgur did not respond to messages Tuesday. Apple said it was cooperating with the FBI and urged users to adopt stronger passwords and enable the two-step authentication feature to prevent.
Naked images purporting to be of other stars also were posted, although the authenticity of many couldnt be confirmed.
Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in computer crimes, said investigators will focus on not only whos responsible for the theft of the photos, but the tools they used and even the idiosyncrasies of how they program.
There is a digital trail, Rasch said. What you hope for (is) the people arent very good at what they do, that they screw up, that they (upset) other hackers. Or that they leave a trail.
Lawrence and other stars who were hacked are now confronting on a very personal level a problem that has dogged the entertainment industry for years online piracy.
Even if you can get it taken down, its likely to pop up somewhere else, said F. Jay Dougherty, a law professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who specializes in entertainment and intellectual property issues.
Mickey Osterreicher, a media lawyer and general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said that while a successful copyright complaint could scrub the images from a site forever, Lawrence and other celebrities will have to remain vigilant and continue filing takedown notices.
You have to go to each place, he said. Its kind of like playing whack-a-mole.
Staff Writer Scott Reid contributed to this report
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Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/photos-633598-images-maroney.html
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