More Trouble for the Cloud as Kim Kardashian Nude Photos Released

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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For some reason, celebrities insist on storing their nude images online. Few have seemed to grasp the fact that putting photos and data on cloud-based services can lead to hacks. Maybe the release of nude photos of Kim Kardashian will teach them better.

TMZ, which leads the celebrity coverage business in terms of scoops, was the first to report Kim Kardashian’s trouble. In what it termed as an “exclusive,” its reporters wrote:

Kanye West is about to get REAL PISSED … because someone leaked what appears to be nude pictures of his wife Kim Kardashian onto the internet — making her the latest victim in a string of celeb hacking incidents.

The pics were uploaded to 4chan and Reddit … and because the both companies have taken a harsh stance on hacked photos, they were quickly removed from both sites. Nude photos were also released by a hacker of what appears to be Vanessa Hudgens and Hope Solo.

The public, and almost certainly businesses, have watched these hacks and many must wondered how safe protections against these hacks are. Most users of cloud-based software, which is part of many products like Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iCloud and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) e-commerce software, have to be anxious about their data. Although most people cannot differentiate between the Kim Kardashian hack and those of huge credit card data bases like the one maintained by Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), the impression that “the cloud” is poorly protected will almost certainly hurt its adoption.

ALSO READ: The 10 Biggest Data Hacks of All Time

The cloud is at the center of the business models of many huge companies. The notion that it is easier to use data held on servers and not on PCs or other hardware devices has gained tremendous traction. Now, the cloud enterprise world needs to explain one more setback. Your information is safe until the day it is not. Kim Kardashian learned that the hard way.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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