FBI seizes Chicago computers linked to hacked celebrity nude fappening photos

Federal agents stormed a Chicago home to seize several computers they say are linked to a trove of hacked celebrity nude photos that were posted online beginning last year.

Intimate photos of stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Christina Hendricks, Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Hope Solo, Anna Kendrick and close to 100 others, almost all female celebrities, were snatched last year from the women's private iCloud accounts. They were posted to an online forum 4chan and recirculated via Reddit.

No arrests have yet been made in the fappening but someone in the house is believed to have used computers there to get "nude and sexually explicit photographs of dozens of female celebrities," Special Agent Josh Sedowsky of the FBI's Cybercrimes Unit said in his affidavit to obtain a search warrant that was just recently released, reports the New York Daily News.

According to Sedowsky's statement, an IP address traced to resident Emilio Herrera "was used to access approximately 572 unique iCloud accounts" between May 2013 and Aug. 31, 2014. The IP address was used for 4,980 attempted reset attempts for 1,987 different passwords, according to the court statement. "In total, the unique iCloud accounts were accessed 3,263 times," said the affidavit.

Some of the targeted women were locked out of their iCloud accounts shortly before their photos were lifted, and were instructed to reset their passwords. FBI suspects that people in the house and the apartment had access to celebrities' email and cloud storage accounts for several months in 2014.

Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence was particularly incensed by the photo theft, and considers the security breach and violation of her privacy a sex crime. "It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting," she said in an interview with Vanity Fair.