This week’s hack of some of Hollywood’s most notable female stars iCloud accounts has called into question the reputation of the world’s most consumer friendly, shared storage service.
As it turns out the hack was not of Apple’s iCloud service at all. It remains as secure and uncompromised as it ever has been (or as Apple would allow you to believe). The security breach was in fact where hackers simply managed to crack said celebrities passwords. This could have just of easily been their emails, bank accounts, instagram or twitter accounts – anything that’s protected by a simple password. While the hackers may have simply researched the answers to the questions that Apple poses as part of its two-factor authentication system, or used a sophisticated piece of shareware to obtain the passwords, the fact remains that people will always be the weakest link in any password security policy.
What also struck me during this week’s reporting of the breach was that it’s still clear that no one really understands the cloud. We saw the BBC’s technology reporter demonstrate iCloud’s file sharing capabilities on the 10pm news, where he took a picture on his iPhone and then showed how it has automatically synced with his iPad. The Daily Mail on the other hand was quick to point out to its readers that the cloud is not actually a real cloud. Despite the media’s illuminating explanation of how it works, the coverage does highlight that truly no-one understands the cloud. I covered this topic in a previous blog. In it I also referenced a new movie staring Cameron Diaz (which is in fact benefiting from all of the iCloud publicity) where her sex tape was inadvertently shared with friends and family synced to their iCloud accounts.
So despite the iCloud hack highlighting that we all need to be a bit more careful with our passwords and authentication, does anyone else think that the bigger story here is why so many famous celebs have naked photos of themselves in the first place? Or am I simply naïve and everyone has naked photos of themselves on their home computer ;).
By Claire Lamb
