iCloud leak hacker who stole Jennifer Lawrence nude photos sentenced to prison

The man who hacked into hundreds of iCloud accounts of Hollywood stars and others before leaking their nude photos across the internet has been sentenced.

Connecticut man George Garafano became infamous when he stole private photos from people including Jennifer Lawrence and made them available across the internet.

He was sentenced to eight months in prison this week, in federal court in Bridgeport. After prison, he must serve three years of supervised release and perform 60 hours of community service.

He was one of four men arrested after the 2014 hacking scandal.

The hack became infamous because of the celebrities it hit: Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton and a range of other famous people had their photos stolen and leaked across the web. But it hit normal internet users, too, and Garofano was accused of stealing photos and private information from 240 people.

Garafano pleaded guilty in April, when he asked for leniency from a judge.

He admitted he had posed as a member of Apple's security staff and sent messages claiming that he needed to get hold of their usernames and passwords. When people replied to those authentic-looking messages with their login information, he broke into their iCloud accounts and stole their photos and other private information.

Jennifer Lawrence has referred to the attack as being equivalent to a sex crime and has called for harsher sentenced for those convicted of such behaviour. The 2014 hack also helped lead the push for other kinds of security tools, such as two-factor authentication, which are intended to ensure that only the person who really owns the account can log into it.