Man pleads guilty to stealing photos of nude women from Apple iCloud accounts

Federal investigators say a Los Angeles County man broke into thousands of Apple iCloud accounts and collected more than 620,000 private photos and videos in a plot to steal and share images of nude young women.

iCloud encryption: iCloud login screen
iCloud login screen

Michael Finnegan:

Hao Kuo Chi, 40, of La Puente, has agreed to plead guilty to four felonies, including conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer, court records show.

Chi, who goes by David, admitted that he impersonated Apple customer support staff in emails that tricked unsuspecting victims into providing him with their Apple IDs and passwords, according to court records.

He gained unauthorized access to photos and videos of at least 306 victims across the nation, most of them young women, he acknowledged in his plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Tampa, Fla.

On Aug. 5, Chi agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer. He faces up to five years in prison for each of the four crimes.

MacDailyNews Take: Book ‘im, Danno!

5 Comments

  1. Whether the cloud is secure or not, it’s a huge money-making business for the top players. Investors love companies with cloud services. I doubt it would make much difference if there were a few security breaches because the enterprise is already committed as they mostly dumped their own storage. I will still keep my own local storage as I think it’s most secure and I can get to it whenever I want.

    0
    1

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.