Hacking into iCloud and swiping nude photos of various celebrities isn’t a one-night operation — it apparently takes months of planning. The Daily Mail notices that a man who has claimed responsibility for this week’s big iCloud photo heist has posted details about how long it took to supposedly pull off the hack. The man, who is now apparently being investigated by the FBI, apparently headed up a group of hackers who were collectively responsible for the theft.
FROM EARLIER: Nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande and others leak in alleged iCloud hack
“This is the result of several months of long and hard work by all involved,” wrote the hacker. “We appreciate your donations and applaud your excitement. I will soon be moving to another location from which I will continue to post.”
But while the hacker revealed the time it supposedly took to pull off the hack, he didn’t reveal any other crucial details about how it was pulled off. The best potential explanation for what happened we’ve seen so far was posted by The Next Web on Monday, which theorized that the hack occurred thanks to “a Python script… that appears to have allowed malicious users to ‘brute force’ a target account’s password on Apple’s iCloud, thanks to a vulnerability in the Find My iPhone service.”
In other words, this means that dedicated hackers with enough patience to hack into someone’s iCloud account can just wait for the script to plow through enough password combinations before stumbling upon the right one.
