Breach, Data Security

Feds recommend jail, fines for Scarlett Johansson hacker

Prosecutors want the man who broke into the email accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and other celebrities to receive a hefty prison fine and pay tens of thousands of dollars to his victims.

In a filing, U.S. attorney requested that Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Fla., serve 71 months in prison and pay a $150,000 fine. He would also pay Johansson $66,179.46 in compensation after hijacking nude images of the actress from her personal email account. 

Chaney is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Following an 11-month police investigation dubbed “Operation Hackerazzi,” Chaney initially pleaded innocent in November after being charged in a 26-count indictment with accessing and damaging protected computers without authorization, wiretapping and aggravated identity theft.

Originally facing up to 121 years in prison, his attorneys struck a deal in March that halved the prison time if he pleaded guilty to nine counts.

Chaney reset his victims' email accounts, who also included singer Christina Aguilera and television sitcom actress Renee Olstead, by using publicly available information to answer security questions.

Once he compromised the accounts, he changed the settings so that all of their emails would be automatically forwarded to him. In addition to photos, Chaney looted emails and other personal documents from his Hollywood victims.

After Chaney gained access to the personal information, he passed along nude photos to a fellow hacker, as well as two celebrity websites, which made them public.

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