After nearly two days of investigation, Apple has concluded that it is not responsible for the security failure that enabled hackers to steal hundreds of private photos from celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton and disseminate them across the internet.
"We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of photos of certain celebrities," said the company in a statement. "When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized 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. [via 9 to 5 Mac]
The company goes on to recommend additional security measures like two-step verification, which makes it much harder for accounts to be accessed by strangers. It's a wise suggestion — but that may not be enough to appease celebrities like Kirsten Dunst, who took to Twitter with some choice words for Apple when her private photos were posted. --Scott Meslow
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