It sounds like a made for Netflix type of storyline.
Scene 1: Hackers secretly steal private nude photos and valuable creative works from famous artists.
Scene 2: Hackers reveal to the celebrities what they have stolen and then attempt to blackmail them: "I'll publish these to the world unless you pay up!"(Cue the dramatic music.)
Scene 3: Artists not only refuse to pay the ransom, they publish what hackers hacked so the stolen items suddenly have no black market value.
2 stars vs. hackers examples
In 2019, this is how things are really playing out in the battle of celebrities versus hackers.
Let's look at two examples where hackers lost out on blackmail money because celebrities beat them to the punch.
Bella Thorne publishes her own nudes to show who has power
Actress Bella Thorne has been in dozens of movies and TV shows. Her credits include everything from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Famous in Love.
Now she's famous for something else: showing hackers she will fight back. In a Twitter post, she started by talking to her 6.7 million Twitter followers:
"For the last 24 hours, I have been threatened with my own nudes."
She then kept writing and talked directly to the hacker:
"I'm putting this out because it's MY DECISION, NOW U DON'T GET TO TAKE ANOTHER THING FROM ME. I can sleep tonight better knowing I took my power back. U can't control my life, you never will."
Then she shifted her tone to address the rest of her Twitter audience:
"Here's the photos he's been threatening me with, in other words, here's my boobies."
Here is the rest of her statement:
See Bella Thorne's complete tweet (contains nudity) where she reveals the hacker taunting her with text messages like "got all the videos."
It also shows the number the hacker was texting from, which many of her Twitter followers say they have texted or called.
Despite the shift in power by releasing her own nudes, it's hard to miss her heartbreak. The hacker has stolen something deeply personal. So often we think of hackers stealing data and dollars, but in this case it was dignity.
Hopefully, her prediction that, "The FBI will be at your house shortly," ends up being true. In Thorne's case, and in the next one.
Radiohead to hackers: we're releasing that music you stole from us
A hacker also recently attempted to blackmail the band Radiohead after stealing never-released music tracks from lead singer Thom Yorke's computer.
The group changed the tune on that one by making a surprising announcement on its blog:
"We got hacked last week, someone stole Tom's mini-disc archives from around the time of Ok Computer [the band's 1997 album which sold nearly 8 million copies] and reportedly demanded $150,000 on threat of releasing it.
So instead of complaining—much—or ignoring it, we're releasing all 18 hours of it on Bandcamp in aid of Extinction Rebellion."
In this case, the band gave up hours of unreleased music tracks, available to anyone now, for a donation to a cause it supports. Read more here.
Just like Bella Thorne's move, Radiohead took power back from the hackers trying to extort them.
Both of them must count the cost of their decisions. But both can also take solace in this: they made hackers' threats powerless.
