The recent hacking of comedian Leslie Jones’s website is under federal investigation, Variety magazine reported on Thursday.
“ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York does currently have an open investigation,” the entertainment-news website quoted an unnamed spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “As a matter of agency policy, we are unable to disclose any information related to an active investigation.”
Contrary to earlier inaccurate media reports, the FBI is not involved in the investigation.
“A hacker accessed the ’Ghostbusters’ star’s iCloud account and posted photos of her passport and drivers license, as well as images of her naked, on Wednesday,” Variety noted. “A racist video was also uploaded to the site.”
Ms. Jones promptly took down her site following the attack.
The Department of Homeland Security is conducting the investigation, not the FBI as some earlier media reports indicated.
As Forbes reported in March, hacking into an iCloud account is not all that sophisticated. Noting the Justice Department’s charges in the 2014 iCloud hacking which exposed the nude photos of actress Jennifer Lawrence, Forbes explained that, “[o]n YouTube, a simple search for ’iCloud phishing’ brings up tutorials on how to craft an effective account theft campaign in just 15 minutes.”
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