A California man was jailed Wednesday for hacking into thousands of iCloud accounts, stealing nude photos and videos of people and sharing them with conspirators.
Hao Kuo Chi, acting online as ‘icloudripper4you’, illegally obtained iCloud certificates from about 4,700 victims and shared their content with other people on more than 300 occasions.
For the crime, U.S. District Judge Katherine Kimball sentenced Mizelle Chike to nine years in federal prison for conspiracy and computer forgery. Guilty in favor Last October.
U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg commented, “Chi has victimized hundreds of women across the country, threatening them for their safety and reputation.”
“Hey Sentence It reflects the determination of the US Attorney’s Office to hold cybercriminals accountable for their crimes. “
According to court documents, Chi operated on Anon-IB for several years, an ‘anonymous photo’ sharing website designed to encourage users to post sexually explicit or explicit images.
The man is accused of using an anonymous foreign-based, end-to-end encrypted email service to share photos with his conspirators, some of whom have made the photos public.
Anon-IB is now taken offline, but during its time on the site, Chi has collected approximately 3.5 TB of victim data in both cloud and physical storage, including content responsible for more than 500 victims.
David Walker, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Tampa Division, said the man led a terrorist campaign from his computer, causing fear and distress to hundreds of victims.
“The FBI is committed to protecting the American people by exposing these cybercriminals and bringing them to justice.”
A similar incident occurred in October 2021, when IT expert Justin Shawn Johnson used his technical skills to hack into the online accounts of thousands of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) employees, including iCloud.
