Its again a big celebrity hack and this time it seems to have major impact in film industry. A 23-year-old Bahamian person, Alonzo Knowles has been arrested and charged for hacking into the email accounts of 130 celebrities and stealing the unreleased movie and TV scripts and sex tapes. Not just these, he also got access to explicit images and even the upcoming album of a famous A-List Celebrity via hacked email accounts.
Identity of Celebrities, movies or shows affected with this attack was not revealed.
Alonzo Knowles was caught when he was trying to sell scripts from a hit TV show to an unidentified radio host. He also offered to sell sexually explicit images and videos found in emails he hacked. The radio host contacted the producer of a show and then producer took help of law enforcement to get the action done against the hacker.
Hacker gained access to victims’ email accounts by sending a “virus” to their computer or by sending phishing page to steal passwords. Unfortunately, he got passwords of more than 130 persons via his attacks.
At the court hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristy Greenberg argued against releasing Knowles on bail. “The scope of the crime here is potentially quite large,” she said, noting that the ongoing investigation began a few weeks ago.
She is right in this. This person could have affected lives of these celebrities and could be the reason of big loss to some producers.
This is why we recommend people to use two-factor authentication. It helps in protecting their account even if the password has been stolen. If you still do not use this, you should go and enable two-factor authentication.
