Using Samsung Smartphones, Celebs Threatened To Release Nude Photos

According to Dispatch, a series of unnamed Korean celebs "actor A", "actor B", "idol C", "director D", "chef E" and many other famous people are facing threats of extortion from hackers.

Specifically, at least 10 Korean celebs have received a message from someone who called himself a "black hat hacker XX". After introducing himself as a hacker, he proceeded to blackmail the victim. He requested an amount of 50 million won (nearly Rs. 30.78 lakhs) to 1 billion won (nearly Rs. 6.1 crores) to keep the personal content (such as photos, videos, messages ...) of these celebs "safe", that is, he will not spread them online.

Dispatch suspects that the "Hacker XX" group is not from South Korea but from abroad because the threatening messages often contain spelling mistakes. In addition, "Hacker XX" also warned the victims that even if these celebs alerted the police, they would not be able to track them down.

In addition, according to the publication, one of the celebs being threatened is "Idol C" who gave money to hackers to protect personal data. On January 7, actor Joo Jin Mo made an official announcement, saying he was also a victim of this "Hacker XX".

It is not yet clear how "Hacker XX" obtained such sensitive data. However, through Dispatch's investigation, all the Korean celebs in this incident were using Samsung Galaxy S smartphones and Samsung Cloud cloud storage service. Most likely, this hacker took advantage of a certain flaw to steal the data.

Due to no official conclusions, it is still not entirely possible to blame Samsung for this incident. However, Samsung Cloud users are advised to protect their accounts with measures such as setting unpredictable passwords or turning on 2-factor authentication.

In 2014, many Hollywood stars who used iPhones also had their iCloud accounts hacked, resulting in a series of sensitive images of these stars appearing on the Internet. After a period of investigation, the police discovered that the hacker group used a "phishing" tactic, sending emails pretending to be Apple and Google to hijack iCloud accounts. The hacker group was then sentenced to prison terms of 8 to 34 months depending on the severity of the violation.