As reported on Wired.
BY DAVID KRAVETS
Photo: Poptorrentnet/Flickr
A Florida man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges in connection to hacking the e-mail accounts of actress Scarlett Johansson and dozens of other celebrities.
Christopher Chaney, 36, of Jacksonville, Florida, had hijacked photos that Johansson took of herself in the nude. They appeared online and showed her looking seductively at a phone camera as she snapped images of her bare breasts while lying on a bed. Another image showed her bare backside, taken as she looked into a mirror.
Chaney told a local Florida news station last year that his hacking began simply as a “curiosity” but soon turned into an addiction for stealing celebrity secrets.
“It just happened and snowballed,” he said. “I didn’t know how to stop doing it myself.”
Some of Chaney’s victims also include Christina Aguilera, Mila Kunis and Renee Olstead. Dozens of other victims are identified by initials only.
U.S. District Judge S. James Otero of Los Angeles sentenced Chaney after reviewing a videotaped statement from a tearful Johansson.
Chaney, who used the online nicknames “trainreqsuckswhat,” “anonygrrl,” and “jaxjaguars911,” wasindicted (.pdf) on nine counts of computer hacking, eight counts of aggravated identify theft, and nine counts of illegal wiretapping. His nickname “trainreqsuckswhat” is a reference to another alleged celebrity hacker named Josh Holly who told Threat Level in 2008 that he had hacked Miley Cyrus’ email account and stole suggestive photos of her that were later posted online.
Chaney was able to guess the passwords celebrities used for their email accounts by monitoring their social media accounts for possible clues — such as a pet’s name — that might point to a password.
Once he hacked into a celebrity’s e-mail account, he’d search the celebrity’s contact list for other celebrity e-mail accounts and then target those victims, too. He’d then alter the account settings to automatically forward a copy of any e-mails the celebrity received to an e-mail account Chaney controlled.