What You Can Learn From Recent Hacking Attacks Against Celebrities

It appears that the Department of Homeland Security is stepping in after one of the Ghostbusters had her personal information leaked online after falling victim to a cyber attack. Leslie Jones, who played Patty Tolan in the recent reboot, had not only photos of her passport and driver’s license but also nude images of herself--allegedly taken from the comedian’s iCloud account--posted on her website by hackers. Less than a day after her website was taken down, Homeland Security began an investigation into the hack.

If it seems odd that Homeland Security has become involved in an actress’s social media issues, it is not uncommon for upper levels of law enforcement to step in on these sorts of cases. The DHS was involved in another case not long ago that involved the email accounts of celebrities being breached to steal unreleased scripts for television and film productions, as well as explicit homemade videos. The perpetrator, Alonzo Knowles, apparently claimed to an undercover agent that he had materials on 130 prominent figures or more before his arrest.

There was also the hack of over 100 celebrities in 2014, in which the hackers stole and then posted the nude pictures of the mostly female list online.

Admittedly, the main draw of these celebrities as targets is simply the fact that they are, in fact, celebrities. While you may not be a celebrity, there are lessons from these events if you want to preserve the security of your workplace and its critical documents.

• As the first line of defense, you need to make sure your antivirus and firewall are up-to-date and secured. Updates for such programs are released because a vulnerability has been discovered, and without the update, there’s nothing to make a user less vulnerable to attacks.
• Avoid questionable websites, as they can often install spyware or other malicious programs onto your system.
• Use secure passwords, and don’t use the same password on multiple accounts.
• Finally, store your files on a secure, isolated, off-site backup system, such as a secure cloud solution. At the very least, if your data does somehow wind up stolen or corrupted, you have another copy that has been preserved.

If you have concerns that your systems might not be as secure as they could be, SCW can help with a comprehensive security solution. For more IT security news, tips, and best practices keep coming back to the SCW blog.