Earlier this month, a man responsible for leaking sexually explicit photos of celebrities was sentenced to five years in jail. Alonzo Knowles also stole scripts and personal information and planned to sell them before he was arrested in 2015.
The prospect of jail time has not deterred some individuals from hacking computers and accounts to gain access to different information. Some, like Knowles, are in it because of greed; others just want to prove they can.
The recent victim of online security breach is "Game of Thrones" star Maisie Williams. Private photos of the young actress, who plays Arya Stark in the hit TV series, and her friends were leaked online after perpetrators were able to access her private Facebook account.
The photographs, which showed Williams topless but with her back facing the camera, were confirmed by her rep to be authentic.
On a lesser note, a number of celebrities also fell victim to breach of privacy after their Twitter accounts were accessed by hackers.
Singer Katy Perry, R&B star Drake, and actor Channing Tatum were a few of the more popular celebs who had their Twitter accounts hijacked by OurMine hackers. Other celebs who lost control of their Twitter accounts were TV actress/model Kylie Jenner, singer Lana Del Rey and TV host/comedian Chelsea Handler.
The hackers also took over the NFL's account by hacking the email of one of their employees. NFL fans were surprised to suddenly read about the death of Commissioner Roger Goodell which was announced on the compromised Twitter account.
The speculation is that the hackers were able to get into the Twitter accounts using weak and reused passwords from their old MySpace accounts.
Kylie's sister Kendall's intimate pictures with Harry Styles were also spread online after someone got into Styles' iCloud account.
A former St. Louis Cardinals executive, Christopher Correa, was convicted for hacking the Houston Astros' database. Correa knew or figured out the password of a former employee of the Cardinals who transferred to the Astros allowing the hacker access to the team's database.
Even leaders of the tech industry who are supposed to be the protectors of their users' personal information were victimized by hackers. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Google's Sundar Pichai, Daniel Elk of Spotify and Travis Kalanick of Uber had their accounts hacked. Zuckerberg's Pinterest account was also breached due to the use of his daughter's first words as password.
What's even more striking is that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter account also fell prey to hackers.
