Sep 06, 2014 8:44 AM

Further to our previous post about Facebook being suspect of accessing data from Facebook users iPhones. With the exception of celebrity nude photo hacks, the following has just come to light, which "may" provide support:

The major leak of nude celebrity photos last weekend was made possible by software designed to let law enforcement lift data from iPhones with ease. The software is used in tandem with a tool made public recently that can crack Apple iCloud passwords.

According to Wired, hackers talk openly on the anonymous image forum Anon-IB about their use of EPPB, or Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, to download data from iCloud storage backups.

EPPB and like programs work to reverse engineer smartphone software to access a device’s data, but only with the aid of iBrute, the password-guessing software for iCloud. The iBrute software, recently released by security research Alexey Troshichev, was made to exploit a flaw in Apple’s 'Find My iPhone' feature to lift users’ iCloud passwords, running through numerous attempts to crack the account before eventual success.

Used in tandem with iBrute, “EPPB lets anyone impersonate a victim’s iPhone and download its full backup rather than the more limited data accessible on iCloud.com,” Wired reported. This provides far more data for hackers, including videos, application data, contact information, and text messages, according to Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics consult and security researcher. http://rt.com/usa/185452-hack-celebrity-photos-police/