The Fappening leaks undoubtedly came from the NSA. ( conspiracy )

submitted by PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

Alright, let's start with what we know about the hack. We were told someone managed to get into the cloud services and stole a bunch of data. Let's take a moment and think about that. That data is all under multiple levels of encryption. Its own encryption, and then each account would have had its own passwords and encryption on it. So if someone stole terabytes from the cloud, and they would have had to to get lucky enough to get some celebrity accounts in there, broke into each one......and all they got were a few nude photos that they released for free? We're talking a tremendous undertaking here. It's simply not plausible that that was the ONLY juicy thing the hacker got a hold of. There are legal documents, pictures, videos, all SORTS of things backed up into the cloud, and all he got were a handful of nudes from a few celebrities? No, I can't accept such a stupid premise. He was never caught, despite many people being rightfully pissed about the invasion of privacy.

So let's break it down further. Aside from what were obviously a few private photos, nearly 100 percent were selfies and pictures that looked intimate, like what they'd send to their boyfriend or husband. So was the "hacker" a jilted lover of all of those girls? Seriously unlikely. He would have been unearthed a year ago and publicly shamed.

So these pictures, they look like selfies from a cell phone. Could the "hacker" just happen to have sophisticated enough tools to monitor one particular cell tower, and managed to get lucky and secure the pics that way. This is also an incredibly unlikely scenario. Even if those gals happened to send the photos to their boyfriends/husbands, each of them were sent within a very short range of each other or to people in incredibly close proximity? I must reiterate, this would be an absurd assumption to make.

So knowing the levels of difficulty involved and the ridiculous luck needed, especially to not get caught after all this time...? To have absolutely nothing else, we have to rule out the iCloud hack. The other method is silly as well. There's no agent that works for all the girls that got hacked that would have had access to their phones, or he would have been found out by now.

So ruling all those avenues out, we know thanks to Edward Snowden that there exists a government agency with the express purpose of monitoring phone calls, text messages, EMAILS, PICTURE MAIL, etc. and stores them. We know that facility exists, and that purpose. You can call Snowden a traitor all you want, but it's telling that no one even attempted to call him a liar. So there's a database run by a government agency that it would be preposterous to not assume had those pictures in the first place.

The circumstantial evidence is undeniable. Once this idea got in, I just can't figure out a way to disprove my theory easily. Maybe one of you can help me disprove it, because the ramifications of this idea are horrifying.

The thing is, since it came from the NSA, it leaves three options. Either a rogue agent did it for absolutely no reason and was never caught and never had the inclination to do anything like it again; a rogue agent did it and is now either in Guantanamo Bay, a shallow grave, or some other secret prison where he will never be able to reveal what he did; or someone was ordered to do it. I find the final option there as the most likely, but most disturbing scenario.

01011011101101

Or some cleverly placed short positions?

deathcomesilent

I think you nailed it on this one. This absolutely seems like a agency-probe for blackmail material, and the "leaks" were possibly reassurance (directed at the victims of the hack) that their private info had been completely compromised. I wonder if there are any common trends between the victims' political beliefs.

The only other scenario that makes sense to me, is apple is behind the leaks in some way. I've never believed for a second that apple can't read the encrypted info sent through their services, so maybe an employee started peeking into data-stores.

Either way, this is a scary one, because it fits quite well with the narrative of the govt stockpiling blackmail material.

FazedOut

All you have to do is hide your wifi router at the Emmys and you can man-in-the-middle hijack the venue's wifi, and with a little more effort you can browse their phone's photo storage, or spoof their backup path. You could socially engineer your way into an account, guess a password, or exploit a vulnerability (like the HTTPS problem we had a few months back) to get into cloud backups, as well.

I suspect the fappening was a group of unlinked internet users that just got lucky over time, and started posting what they had after the initial release, which grew and was eventually released to the public. Then copycats started to seek out more content to exploit.

Not saying that the NSA isn't a morally bankrupt agency that should be shut down, but I don't see the gain in releasing that information. Did it distract us from anything?

PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

It lead to the successful censorship of 4chan and reddit, right as GamerGate was gaining steam and before anyone had a chance to ask: 'if this level of cronyism and corruption is going on on gaming sites, what's going on with the rest of journalism in America?'

laserguidedpolarbear

This is the right answer. The OP doesn't really have a firm grasp of user cloud services and it's security. It also doesn't make sense for the NSA to intentionally leak things on a large scale like that. The more huge leaks gain public attention, the more their illegal data gathering programs will become threatened.

taco

Another possible motive would be NSA releasing the photos (or giving them to someone who would) to further demonize hackers. Show how scary and awful hackers (that don't work for the NSA of course) are.. In turn, they can prep the public for more legislation targeting "hackers" that could aid a myriad of paid interests. Example would be.. sopa/pipa type legislation, forcing back doors into everything ect

01011011101101

sopa/pipa type legislation, forcing back doors into everything ect

With rich celebrity faces pushing for said legislation.

OyVeyGoys

Maybe they were released to divert attention away from something happening elsewhere in the world? I can't think of anything though.

deathcomesilent

According to wiki, the first leak was on August 31, 2014.

A quick google shows that there was:

an amber alert posted that day.

a social media "threat" implying that "the purge" (yes, like the movie) was coming, which seems like the only widespread phenomenon going on that week.

a truck crash involving 2 semis.

Not sure I see an obvious pattern, but I could imagine the leak being related to potential civil unrest.

Citizen

My understanding is that a lot of it is due to easily guessable security questions. "What is your mother's maiden name?" or "Where was your first job?" can be gotten from Wikipedia for some celebrities.

lxbb

Seems plausible, but surely celebrities would be bad to target, they would then start asking for stronger encryption publicly, their privacy infringed, and their voices are heard all over the world. Blackmail rather than public release would be more beneficial, which I think someone already suggested an NSA employee stole these pics, then was hacked themselves by "unofficial" hackers, not NSA.

PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

But that's the rub, isn't it? The celebrities DID call for more stringent encryption services. They were righteously upset by the whole thing. And now the UN is calling for censorship of the internet, China, Russia, the UK, the US, they're all embracing an idea of more strenuous control. Which lends credibility to the idea that someone directly ordered the release of the photos.

lxbb

There certainly has been a patern since then of wanting to control. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole Apple vs fbi encryption case was a hoax to make us feel like there is some protection.

PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

True, but it attributes an odd level of dedication and work to hand over for free. That part gets me, and the unearthing of absolutely nothing else bothers me as well. The hacker just came into 4chan, dumped a few photos, did it again on another thread, then just disappeared. All this time since, and nothing. He wasn't caught, and then just decided 'oh well, that was fun, but I better never hack anything again' is just...odd. It's plausible, but just doesn't add up right to me.

Be honest, do you believe it was a hacker, or does my theory logistically make more sense? Realistically, what my theory is would be MUCH easier to accomplish.

un1ty

You can call Snowden a traitor all you want, but it's telling that no one even attempted to call him a liar.

Bingo. Out of all the leaks, wikileaks included, no one has called Snowden or Assange liars. No government agency has officially denied the existence, only has stated the quintessential "we can neither confirm nor deny" line.

Good post, OP.

quit_whining

This is prime example of why Greenwald really played his cards right by releasing things piece by piece. Yes, it was important that he vet the information Snowden gave him and make sure innocents were protected by removing their names. But the other effect was to make sure that when they did deny something, he was ready with the next batch of information being able to prove that they were flat out lying. I'm really glad Snowden chose him to deal with releasing the information to the public.

They did initially try to deny spying on American citizens, but Greenwald clobbered them by exposing them for the liars they are. This is why they are currently blocked from simply denying everything.

quit_whining

I think you left out a fourth option, assuming your NSA theory is correct. It's possible the NSA was hacked. I've read several places that the NSA spends a lot more effort weakening the security of others' systems than they do strengthening their own security. It could be as simple as one NSA employee grabbing the photos for his own personal use and getting hacked.

That said, I think your theory that the photos came from the NSA is one of the most likely that I've heard.

PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

It wouldn't? If it's common knowledge or easy to find those IDs, then someone should come forth quickly and show either a database of those IDs, or if they were even able to find one, singular ID of one of those celebrities that had their photos leaked. To me, this seems like a clever explanation, but it would still require that the hacker know the women intimately.....which would not explain why the hacker was never caught.

Vladimir_Komarov

I like your angle. This felt like a massive social experiment at the time, and the data gleaned from the frenzy would have been highly valuable.

PM_Me_Booty_PicsPlz

Remember too, what sites were they released on? Reddit and 4chan. The two sites that became disturbingly controlled and censored shortly thereafter. It's diabolical, people were too busy enjoying the leak to begin to examine the leak critically. And the solution is widespread censorship of the internet, not shutting down the monitoring agency that was responsible. I just wish I was smarter and put this together quicker, I worry too much time has expired now. If no one can invalidate me with irrefutable proof that I'm wrong, we must try to get this theory to have traction. We must attempt to let the people know about this insidious push for control. We MUST fight back now, if it's not already too late.