In late 2010, the FBI launched the colourfully-named "Operation Hackerazzi" to hunt down a hacker who stole naked pictures from the iPhones and computers of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and other celebrities.
The investigation, led by the FBI's field bureau in Los Angeles, took 11 months but eventually led to the arrest and prosecution of Christopher Chaney, a Florida hacker.
Johansson taped a tearful statement that was played in court, where she described being "truly humiliated and embarrassed" as her photographs circulated on the internet.
Chaney was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Apple, meanwhile, has said it is looking into the claims that the photographs were stolen from the celebrities' iCloud system. “We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report,” a spokeswoman told Recode .
A key element for the tech giant will be whether the whole system is compromised or if hackers had just managed to break into individual accounts.
While law enforcement has so far been tight-lipped about the investigation, a freewheeling and open-sourced investigation is already well underway by the amateur detectives of the internet.
Users of the reddit social networking service have been combing the web for clues and their suspicions soon turned on Bryan Hamade, a 27-year-old man from Georgia.
Redditors claimed that screenshots posted by the leaker of the Lawrence photos showed network drives in the background which matched drives on Mr Hamade's computer.
In an interview with Buzzfeed , Mr Hamade strenuously denied being responsible and said he was being bombarded with abusive phone calls and emails by internet vigilantes.
The detectives of Reddit have leapt to conclusions many times before, most famously accusing a missing university student of being behind the Boston bombings.
The student, Sunil Tripathi, had in fact killed himself some time before but his body was not found until ten days after the bombing.
Reddit's general manager later posted an apology, saying discussions on the site had "fuelled online witch hunts".
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1x40w2Y
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