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Apple Tightens Security After Nude Photo Hack

Apple will strengthen and add more security features on its online backup services, iCloud, after hackers stole and then posted a massive collection of nude celebrity photos, the company’s chief executive Tim Cook said on Thursday.

The tech giant said they would add an alerts feature to notify users whenever there are activities that could be sign of a break-in, The New York Times reported.

It would alert customers through emails and push notifications when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time, Cook told the Wall Street Journal.

Currently, users get an email when someone tries to change a password or login for the first time from an unverified Apple device but there are still no notifications for restoring iCloud data.

The company will start rolling out the notifications in two weeks. It said the new system will allow users to act immediately, including changing the password to retake control of the account, or alerting Apple’s security team.

On Sunday, nude photos of more than a hundred female celebrities, including Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence, were hacked and posted on online messaging board 4chan.

Cook said the accounts were compromised when the hackers answered the accounts’ security questions correctly or when users were victimized by a phishing scam to get their user IDs and passwords.

But in the end, the CEO believed that Apple could have done more to make the people aware of their online security, particularly by creating stronger passwords.

“When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece,” he said. “I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That’s not really an engineering thing.”

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