Leslie Jones, star of the recent Ghostbusters reboot, has taken her website offline after it was hacked and defaced with personal and explicit images allegedly stolen from her iCloud account.
JustLeslie.com remains offline at the time of writing, after hackers posted images of her passport and driver’s license as well as nude images which The Guardian claims were taken from her iCloud. There was also a racist element to the attack, as hackers also posted a video of gorilla Harambe on Jones’s site.
No one individual or group has yet claimed responsibility for the hack, but Jones has been the victim of racist and sexist internet trolls in recent months, unhappy at her role in the all-female remake of cult movie classic Ghostbusters.
Jones briefly left Twitter earlier this summer after she received wave after wave of abuse. At the time she tweeted: “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the s*** I got today...wrong.”
That abuse was spearheaded by right wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who was subsequently banned from Twitter. He has however denied any involvement in the hacking incident.
In a statement sent to The Hollywood Reporter he said: “I'm distressed to hear that Leslie Jones has been hacked and naked pictures of her have been posted online. I know we had our differences after my review of Ghostbusters but I wish her all the best at what must be a deeply upsetting time."
Twitter recently launched a “quality filter” that it hopes will help reduce the amount of abuse on its platform. The company has repeatedly come under fire for how it deals with abuse, particularly towards females.
If it is confirmed that the explicit pictures were stolen from Jones’s iCloud account it will once again raise questions over the security of Apple’s online storage service.
In September 2014, hackers released personal, intimate images of hundreds of celebrities including actress Jennifer Lawrence, model Kate Upton and singer Rihanna. A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to the hack, claiming he’d used phishing techniques to secure username and passwords. Apple eventually implemented two-factor authentication in response to the breach.
Jones has yet to comment on the hack.
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