Nude photos purportedly of Jennifer Lawrence and other stars leaked online after hack attack
Photos obtained by hacking women's iCloud accounts, media report as star of The Hunger Games and fellow actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead express frustration, but other stars call photos 'fakes'
Weak passwords or a vulnerability in Apple's iCloud platform may have been exploited by a hacker who posted private nude photos of a number of Hollywood female celebrities.
The hacker posted online a laundry list of 101 celebrities from whom he stole nude photos, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and pop star Rihanna, and threatened to post them within days.
The leaked photos prompted angry reactions from the stars.
"This is a flagrant violation of privacy. The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence," the star's agent said.
By late Sunday, Twitter had begun suspending accounts that linked to the Lawrence photos.
There have been reports that the hacker accessed the files through the iCloud platform, which is used by iPhone users to store settings and, crucially, which backs up photos taken with the phone to "cloud" servers, but this has not been confirmed.
Experts speculate the likeliest explanation was the leak of an email and password combination, either by guesswork or "phishing", when users are fooled by sites into entering their login details, which are then used against them.
