Celebrity nude photo leak: Were their iCloud accounts hacked?

After personal photos of several celebrities leaked online on Sunday, reports suggested that the photos may have been obtained through hacking of their iCloud accounts.

Gawker reports that the leak was hinted at last week when a user on 4chan talked of having access to personal photos of several celebrities. On Sunday evening the pictures were leaked on internet message boards. Posters on 4chan and reddit claimed that the photos were obtained by hacking iCloud accounts.

The list of celebrities is said to include Avril Lavigne, Hillary Duff, Jenny McCarthy, Kayley Cuoco, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Kirsten Dunst, Krysten Ritter, Mary Kate Olsen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rihanna, Scarlet Johansson, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Dave Franco

Jennifer Lawrence and Mary Elizabeth Winstead confirmed the authenticity of the photos and slammed the leak while Arianna Grande and Victoria Justice called them out as fake.

Lawrence's spokesperson has reportedly said that anyone posting the photos will be prosecuted. Mashable reported that Twitter had taken down accounts that had shared the photos on their platform. 

The anonymous 4chan user claimed to have explicit videos of Lawrence and posted a screenshot of his computer, asking for donations to a paypal account in return for posting the videos online. 

While confirming the photos were real, actress Mary Winstead tweeted, "Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this."

Apple has not made a statement yet on the hacking allegations, but the controversy has raised several questions about how safe it is to store personal data on the cloud service.