I'm not an expert on this subject, but I'll take an initial whack at it. Leaks come from at least two places:
- Vengeful exes (this happens with celebs too after all)
- Hacks
Hacks are usually performed by guessing someone's password when they're not using
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, or by
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. Usually the thing being hacked is their email account or cloud storage. Typically it's a multi-step process that starts with the weakest link (whichever service they use that is least secure), and proceeds from there. Let's say you want to log into someone's iCloud, but you don't know their password. Rather than trying to guess it, you might be able to guess their email password and take over their account long enough to reset their iCloud password via email.
A lot of hacks are actually done through people connected to the celebrity. Celebrities often have less famous friends or significant others who are not as careful with their device security. They might have intimate pictures of their celeb friends, but in some cases hacking them is useful for getting the phone number or email address of the celebrity.
The hacks are typically performed by paid hackers. A fan of a celebrity with some money to burn will pay a hacker in cryptocurrency and then the hacker will get to work with what available information they have. Later, the person who paid for the nudes may trade them with others in a nude-trading ring on the darknet. Someone from that ring may eventually leak the images, either out of "altruism" or because the nudes have devalued due to being shared around the ring so much. Once they lose their trading value, which might take years, they will find their way onto the clearnet and get posted on a forum like this. This is basically how the Fappening occurred; one person posted a number of nudes he'd obtained, and others in the trading ring went into what you could call a "panic sell" in stock market terms, releasing their hacked nudes as well.
Anyone please correct me if I've gotten any details wrong.
P.S.: It's worth pointing out that hacking is a federal crime, and several people went up the river for Fappening-related hacking. So it's not something I'd ever pay for or attempt to do.
