Ever since the very first viral celebrity sex tape, the internet has seen tons of others that followed.
One after another, more and more sex tapes were leaked, intentionally or not.
While some are legit, most others remain allegations.
But nothing has came in such huge bundle, like the leaked collection of hundreds of private photos and videos of various celebrities containing nudity and sex. Most of the leaked photos and videos are women, many of whom are high-profile figures and celebrities, including those in the entertainment industry and sports.
Referred as "Celebgate" and "The Fappening", the event had received varied reactions from the media and fellow celebrities.
These happened when hackers managed to exploit vulnerabilities in Apple's security system and weak password protection. They include:
- Jennifer Lawrence.
- Kate Upton.
- Kaley Cuoco.
- Ariana Grande.
- Rihanna.
- Kirsten Dunst.
- Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
- Victoria Justice.
- Hope Solo.
- Yvonne Strahovski.
- Teresa Palmer.
- Kim Kardashian.
- Selena Gomez.
- Cara Delevingne.
- Gabrielle Union.
- Emily Ratajkowski.
- Kirsten Dunst.
- Lea Michele.
- Vanessa Hudgens.
- Avril Lavigne.
- Jessica Brown Findlay.
- Justin Verlander.
- Jill Scott.
- McKayla Maroney.
- And lots more.
The majority of the leaked photos and videos are those that the celebrities took in private, many of which depict partial to full nudity, as well as sex acts and sexual intercourse.
These photos and videos were obtained when hackers managed to breach Apple's iCloud cloud services suite.
At first, they were distributed privately for at least a couple weeks from the "deep web," before the hackers thought of making them public, and posted them on the imageboard 4chan. Later, the photos and videos quickly went viral, and were later disseminated by other users on other websites and social networks such as Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr.
The event marked the first release of leaked celebrity pictures with many more coming.
In September 2014, Apple said it was "outraged" by the user account hacking. "Celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack," the company said.
A few years later, one of the individuals involved in the 2014 celebrity photo leak scandal was sentenced to eight months in prison.
The first is Christopher Brannan, convicted for aggravated identity theft and unauthorized access. Next, is Ryan Collins, George Garofano, Emilio Herrera and Edward Majerczyk, all of whom were convicted for unauthorized access.
Brannan received 34 months in prison, Collins 18 months, Garofano 8 months, Herrera 16 months, and Majerczyk 9 months.
And as for Majerczyk, he also had to pay a $5,700 restitution.
The culprits were charged with hacking into the Apple iCloud accounts of more than 200 people, in a phishing scam campaign that happened between April 2013 and October 2014, where they tricked users into giving them their iCloud usernames and passwords.
In some cases, the culprits also traded login information with others, investigators said.
Garofano, one of the hackers, in a court letter, said that his actions were "not only illegal, but morally wrong."
"I feel remorse for any that could have been affected by this on any scale, public or private," he added.
Jennifer Lawrence, one of the victims, strongly condemned the hackers and called for stricter laws to prevent such crimes in the future.
"I think people saw [the hacking] for what it was, which was a sex crime, but that feeling, I haven't been able to get rid of it," she told Vogue last year.
"Having your privacy violated constantly isn't a problem if you're perfect. But if you're human, it's terrifying."
All the hackers involved in the scandal have been sentenced to jail time.
36-year-old Ryan Collins, 36 was sentenced to 18 months, 29-year-old Edward Majerczyk was given nine months in federal prison, and 32-year old Emilio Herrera got 16 months in prison after a plea deal.