The leak also prompted increased concern from analysts surrounding the privacy and security of cloud computing services such as iCloud-with a particular emphasis on their use to store sensitive, private information. Critics felt the distribution of the images was a major invasion of privacy for their subjects, while some of the allegedly depicted subjects denied their authenticity. The incident was met with a varied reaction from the media and fellow celebrities. Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks. The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud, or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims' passwords. The leak has been popularly dubbed The Fappening and also Celebgate.
On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 5chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit.
