J-Law Gets Her Revenge, With Celeb Photo Hacker Set To Face Prison

A Pennsylvania man involved in the notorious 2014 celebrity photo hack - known, grossly, as ‘The Fappening’ - has agreed to plead guilty for the breach and faces up to five years in prison.

According to Gawker, 36-year-old hacker Ryan Collins made a deal with the FBI to only serve “a prison term of 18 months”, though the sentencing judge is not compelled to sticking with that timeframe.

Officially, he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by hijacking more than 100 celebrity accounts between November 2012 and September 2014. He tricked numerous actresses – or their family and friends – into thinking his phishing emails to obtain email and iCloud usernames and passwords were official communications from Apple and Google.

In an interesting twist, Collins is not taking the fall for leaking or uploading the images (which were shared mostly on 4chan and Reddit) – only the hacking. Whether or not this means others will soon be nailed for sharing the private pictures online, we’re yet to discover.

The investigation is ongoing.

Room's Brie Larson, 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Scarlett Johansson were just some of the 100-plus celebrities targeted by Collins. Few have spoken about the invasion of privacy, though Jennifer Lawrence – perhaps the most high-profile of the hackees – had this to say to Vanity Fair in 2014:

“It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That’s why these Web sites [who published the photos] are responsible. Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody’s mind is to make a profit from it. It’s so beyond me. I just can’t imagine being that detached from humanity. I can’t imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside.”

Photo: Lionsgate.