One of the biggest hacking stories to happen in recent history was by an Atlanta local. Bryan Hamade, a 27-year-old who live in Lawrenceville, Georgia, has been identified to be the hacker of the 2014 celebrity pictures hack.
On August 31st, 2014, hundreds of photos (nude and clothed) were released of actresses, models, and athletes. Pictures of celebrities included Jennifer Lawrence (Star of Georgia-filmed “Hunger Games”), Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice, Kirsten Dunst, Hope Solo, and others. Lawrence and Winstead confirmed the authenticity of the photos while Grande and Justice denied.
The photos were released on 4chan and later on Reddit and Tumblr. These personal photos were alledgedly taken from Apple’s iCloud and sold for Bitcoin for initial purposes. Attempts to suppress these photos were unsuccessful and are still circulating on the internet.
After the release of the photos, representatives for victims released statements of finding the hacker and the FBI have been on the investigation.
Bryan denied the accusations in an interview with BuzzFeed.
I am not behind this. It was so stupid — I saw a lot of people posting the actual leaks and bitcoin addresses and I’ve read a lot about bitcoin and how they’re are valuable and I thought, oh cool I’ll get free bitcoins,” he said. “I am just an idiot who tried to pull one over on 4chan and lost big time and stupidly left this identifying information. They took my proof and back traced it — it isn’t remotely true. I am not a hacker. I have no idea how the hell someone could hack into all those accounts.
According to Hamade, he believe that the people who leaked the photos and who breached the iCloud accounts could be entirely different people. Hamade has also been also doing his own investigation to clear his own name
