Arrested hacker trying to sell stolen scripts of popular TV shows

This week in New York, the hacker Alonzo Knowles was arrested , trying to sell the personal information of Hollywood stars and famous athletes to the host of one of the radio shows, and a collection of scripts for films and series not yet released. The 23-year-old Knowles, originally from the Bahamas, received all this information thanks to hacking of accounts of stars and people close to them.

Judging by the information available about this case, Knowles calculated people who were familiar and close to the stars, then using social engineering and phishing attacks he got access to their computers and accounts in various services. He combed computers and accounts for sensitive information, and then used them as a means of accessing the accounts of the stars themselves.

Hollywood actors and actresses who received messages allegedly from their acquaintances easily succumbed to deception, as a result of which their personal information also fell within the reach of a hacker.

According to some reports, Knowles got access to several scripts of films and episodes of series, in which these actors should be removed or already removed, as well as to their private photos, videos and various personal information.

The investigation did not disclose information about which actors and athletes became victims of the cracker, and the scripts of which series he took over. According to unverified information, Knowles turned out to have scripts for the first six episodes of the next season of the "very popular series", as well as personal data and private photos and videos of about 130 famous personalities.

Then Knowles, deciding to make money on his activities, contacted the presenter of one of the popular radio shows in New York and demonstrated his knowledge of this information by sending screenshots of the screen with open pdf-files containing scripts.

The host of the show contacted the producer of the "popular television series", and he turned to the competent authorities. While working undercover, the US Interior Ministry official agreed to meet with Knowles and the terms of the deal - selling 15 scripts and four social security numbers belonging to the hacked victims. For this information, the hacker wanted to get $ 80,000 - and, apparently, he will receive a considerable time.

Hackers are constantly trying to get to personal data and private photos and videos of various celebrities. Sometimes they succeed: in 2012, a hacker who hacked the accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and others, received 10 years in prison .

In August 2014, as a result of the events, nicknamed “Celebgate” and “The Fappening”, through the resources of 4chan and reddit, whole collections of private photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kate Upton, Mary Winstead, Kirsten Dunst, Kaley Cuoco leaked to the network et al. The FBI is still investigating this case. Some claim the leak was due to the hacking of iCloud cloud storage, although Apple denies this.