The leaking of the private photos of famous female stars sparked initial suggestions that Apple's iCloud service had been compromised to access the images and leak them across the internet.The photos have led to a backlash against the unknown hacker who is accused of violating the privacy of the women involved. A police investigation is under way to identify the culprit.Spider-Man actress Kirsten Dunst, who is also reportedly a victim of the leak, seemed to point the finger of blame when she tweeted: 'Thank you iCloud.'But in a statement Apple said: 'When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilised Apple's engineers to discover the source. Our customers' privacy and security are of utmost importance to us.'After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet.'None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple's systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone.'We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.'
Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz (above at the New York premiere of Sex Tape) are currently promoting the film
The film follows a couple who make a private sex tape only to find it has been accidentally shared to the publicFBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said it was 'aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high-profile individuals, and is addressing the matter'.Other stars said to have been affected include Avril Lavigne, Cat Deeley and Rihanna, with actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whose movies include A Good Day To Die Hard, already acknowledging pictures in which she is featured are genuine.A piece of computer code that repeatedly guesses passwords has been found online. The script was posted to software site GitHub, but a message has since appeared saying that Apple had fixed the bug.According to the post, the script uses the top 500 most common passwords approved by Apple to try to gain access to user accounts. If successful, it would give the hacker full access to the iCloud account, including photographs.iCloud is Apple's own cloud service, a wireless storage facility that can be used to access files remotely.