Management Information Systems: iCloud Hack

In 2018, Christopher Brannan of Richmond pleaded guilty for “celebgate” hack, an incident that had occurred in 2014. The incident involved phishing for credentials and attempt to gain access to over 200 iCloud, Facebook and Yahoo accounts of different users, mainly celebrities (Owen, 2019). In 2019, Brannan was sentenced to 34 months in prison for the crime (Owen, 2019). To gain access, the perpetrator employed different tactics, including responding to security questions that normally accompany forgotten passwords. To enhance the chances of getting them right, he would first review other social media accounts of victims to establish clues and relationships (Owen, 2019). With regard to phishing, Brannan would use email addresses that appeared like legitimate security accounts from Apple (Owen, 2019). This allowed him to completely acquire iCloud backups, photographs, and other private information from the victims.

 “Celebgate” hack is a form of iCloud hack. It involves unauthorized access to the victim’s private information, in this case, associated with Apple devices. However, there are several ways this form of hacking can be prevented. First, setting a strong password is of great essence (Newman, 2017). A strong password is characterized by a length or multiple characters that make it hard to be guessed (Newman, 2017). Often, people use the names of their pets, parents, and so on to ease password memory. This makes it easy for the password to be guessed and hacked. The process of setting passwords is equally critical. It is important to be careful with security questions answered as again this is another avenue exploited by hackers in retrieving the forgotten passwords (Newman, 2017). Some security questions can be easily guessed, consequently easing hacking of the password. Cloud hacking can further be prevented by enabling two-factor authentication on the user’s account (Newman, 2017). A two-factor authentication feature makes it difficult for the hackers to access the target’s cloud account. This is because, other than a password or a personal identification number, a two-factor authentication security feature sends a code to the smartphone device of the user, or prompts provision of a fingerprint, before the cloud account can be accessed.