Bryan Hamade has been identified by some as the hacker behind the celebrity naked photos scandal.
The pictures were apparently accessed through a hack after iCloud had a security issue, which opened access to them.
Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Selena Gomez are among the alleged victims.
People have been hunting for the person(s) behind the hack, and some people including some Reddit users and security researchers believe that it’s Bryan Hamade.
Hamade goes by the username BluntMastermind.
He’s a 27-year-old who lives in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
A post is circulating on Reddit’s image-sharing website Imgur that claims to show proof that Hamade is the hacker.
But he denied the claim to BuzzFeed.
“I am not behind this. It was so stupid — I saw a lot of people posting the actual leaks and bitcoin addresses and I’ve read a lot about bitcoin and how they’re are valuable and I thought, oh cool I'll get free bitcoins,” he said. “I am just an idiot who tried to pull one over on 4chan and lost big time and stupidly left this identifying information. They took my proof and back traced it — it isn’t remotely true. I am not a hacker. I have no idea how the hell someone could hack into all those accounts.”
“It’s been a nightmare and I haven’t slept in 34 hours, now. 4chan users are harassing me with non-stop phone calls and emails. They email me constantly, emailing saying they‘ll hack my personal websites and keep calling my phone, calling me a fag and then hanging up. They also said they’ll hack my mom’s site, so I took it down,” he added.
Hamade himself has been trying to find the alleged original leaker to clear his own name.
“The real guy is on 4chan posting intermittently. He’s most likely the one behind it, but it does seem the photos passed around to multiple people before being leaked, so it may just be someone who has them and didn’t hack to get them,” Hamade said.
“They seem to have amassed a huge collection trading picture for picture and it’s possible that whoever they sold it to started leaking the pictures yesterday — at least that’s what it seems like.”
He also expressed regret for his original plan.
“I regret it so much,” he said. “I didn’t even get any bitcoin out of it. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done and I hope it won’t ruin my life, though it probably will since it’s just the biggest news story.”
But a number of screenshots show Hamade allegedly claiming credit for the leak or messaging celebrities, including McKayla Maroney, one of the alleged victims of the tweet. Then again, Hamade said that the Maroney tweet is a coincidence.
She posted a video of her doing some gymnastics moves where she was doing arm dances, and I replied then she retweeted it. I was an active user on Twitter before all the craziness. That’s pretty much it,” he said.
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