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Two men in the US are facing up to 15 years in federal prison in connection to the development of a piece of software that was able to automatically hack into the private online photo albums of women and steal their naked photos.

Brandon Bourret and Athanasios Andrianakis were arrested Friday and accused of creating a piece of software named "Photofucket" that looks through private online photo albums on the photo-sharing site Photobucket. They have not yet responded to the charges. The US Department of Justice cautions that "the charges contained in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

Lots of people use Photobucket to host personal photographs online. It was acquired by MySpace in 2007 for $250 million but eventually sold off to a Seattle-based company in 2010. Though it is less popular than it once was, a lot of people still have photos on the site because they used it for MySpace, while others still use it as a handy place to store their photographs online and share them with others.

A giant cache of photos from around the world is an attractive target for hackers. There are plenty of forums online where people buy and sell tools to search through private photos in search of naked women. But most of those tools — like the ones used in a mass release of naked celebrity photos called "the fappening" — require users to hack each account manually.

Bourret and Andrianakis are accused of developing Photofucket so it would isolate hidden photographs automatically.

The tool works by "fusking" URLs to expose links to private photos. Fusking is the act of locating a website or account that you know is on the web, and then guessing URL addresses that branch off it until you find pages that are not supposed to be seen. The tool tries lots of different URLs automatically — by sequentially changing plausible dates or numbers in the original URL — until it discovers links to photos that are on the web but posted in a location that is otherwise private.

Here's what it looks like when you run the tool on a person's account in search of photos:

Fusking, however, isn't a new exploit. In fact, it has been a known security issue for years. BuzzFeed wrote about Photobucket fuskers back in 2012. Photobucket has tried to shut down fuskers by implementing levels of security, which appears to have infuriated the hackers who were trying to find naked photos.

Emails that the Department of Justice says were sent between Bourret and Andrianakis show a constant fight against the site's increased security:

Developing the hacking software was just the first step, though. To make money off an exploit, hackers need to find a willing buyer. Luckily for hacker developers, there are several online forums dedicated to stealing photos of women and sharing advice on how to do it.

One of the most famous forums used by hackers to find porn is called AnonIB. You might recognise that name — it's the website where photos of naked celebrities first surfaced after a user named "Originalguy" posted his collection of photographs stolen from Apple's iCloud. That collection quickly spread to the anarchic bulletin board forum 4chan, then to Reddit, as stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton saw their private photographs posted online.

Niche porn forums have discussed Photobucket exploits for years, but Photofucket managed to monetise that interest by automating the process and marketing the software directly to porn forums.

The basic version of the product was available free, but the developers charged $29.99 for a fully upgraded version that could retrieve passwords and automatically scan user profiles.

A post on the "booty shakin'" discussion forum on ShakinItForum.com from 2007 titled "New photobucket exploit out" is typical of the interest in Photobucket exploits. User "Toxik" explained that the exploit "hasn't been longer than a week. Grants access too all images and videos, including Tos'd [Images deleted for violating the site's terms of use]. If anybody knows anything about it please post here, I will contribute when I find out more."

Other users joined in to the discussion, commenting "any proof? couse i've already heard this story..." so the original poster returns with a link to AnonIB that details the exploit in a specific subforum dedicated to finding naked photographs of women on Photobucket.

Photobucket exploits and fusking remain a regular topic of discussion on AnonIB, even after it wiped much of the site following the iCloud hack.

Here's a discussion from January 2015 on AnonIB:

One user posted a photo of a woman and her Photobucket URL, then asked for help in finding her private photographs and movies. A more experienced user fusks the victim's profile by manually trying different URLs in the hope of finding photos. The user explains that "some chicks just keep adding -1-2-3" onto photo URLs, making it easy for people to guess the links to their private photos.

Someone else on AnonIB suggested trying to reset her password using Google searches to learn her date of birth and email address. Later comments ask for "any wins?" "Wins" is internet slang for naked photographs, which is what hackers are looking for on Photobucket.

The arrests of two men isn't going to stop people fusking for naked photos. The software is still available free online, and exploits are still openly discussed on forums. One Wikipedia user warns that the fusking industry has existed for years:

When sites like realwebwhores, navnet, ixtractor, fuskerfind and anonib exist because of photobucket's crap security and millions of unwitting girls are having their images stolen and hidden in rars files on sites like rapidshare I'd call that a "slight" security problem.

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Asian American groups accuse HARVARD of racial bias in admissions...


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When Walmart closed five stores in four different states on the same day, claiming that they were shutting down due to unspecified “plumbing problems,” people became suspicious. Some citizen theories involve the military, and others involve the nationwide OUR Walmart walkouts that began at one of the California stores targeted for temporary closing. One piece of evidence was that Walmart hadn’t yet filed for permits for any of these urgent renovations. Well, now they have.

OUR Walmart is the campaign for better pay and work conditions for Walmart employees that’s backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. UFCW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Walmart of targeting the store for temporary closure to punish that store’s employees, many of whom have been active in the OUR Walmart movement. The other closings, the union claimed in its complaint, were to make it look like the temporary closings weren’t about punishing the employees of one store. The closings, which could last until the end of this year, put about 2,200 full- and part-time workers out of work.

Walmart announced today that it finally got around to filing for the required permits for the plumbing work in these five stores, which includes tearing up floors and replacing sewer lines. According to Walmart, these five stores all had extensive plumbing problems, which included flooded sales floors and other issues that affected their ability to prepare and sell food in-store.

A Walmart spokesperson told Reuters that the company has granted severance pay to part-time employees, which is not its normal policy, and that about half of the employees displaced by the plumbing repairs have found jobs at other nearby Walmart stores.

Wal-Mart seeks repair permits for stores in labor dispute

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These are the custom Big Lebowski character nesting dolls handpainted by artist Andy Stattmiller. They are, from largest to smallest: Walter Sobchak (holding Donny's ashes and his ex wife's pomeranian), The Dude, Jesus, Maude, Mr. Lebowski, The Stranger, and the marmot (actually a ferret). Has anyone made one of those 'What Big Lebowski Character Are You' quizzes yet? I bet they have. *Googles* Yes, they have. And I just got Maude Lebowski. "You have a powerful personality but It's all about you, isn't it? You're entire life is about entitlement, and you have no problems with going after anything you need to make that life happen -- including babies. You don't pretend to be anything else, however, and there's something to be said for honesty." Wow, that does NOT sound like me at all. I'm starting to think the idiots who make these things are the people who would get, "People who shouldn't make quizzes" if they ever took a decently constructed "What Job Is Right For You" quiz. Keep going for shots of them from all angles, but check out Andy's website for sets of Breaking Bad, Batman, and Robin Williams character nesting dolls.

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Facebook's Oculus virtual reality headset is set to launch in 2016. 

The device has come a long way since Facebook acquired the company that makes it, with the new design looking much sleeker than the initial versions. 

But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the ultimate goal is to eliminate any distinction between the computer product and ordinary eyewear. The real potential, he said during an public "townhall" Q&A session on Thursday, is when Oculus "stops looking like goggles or big headsets, but instead it just looks like normal glasses."

Zuckerberg also said he's bullish on Oculus' potential for both virtual reality and augmented reality. Virtual reality is when your vision is completely taken up by a computer generated scene, whereas augmented reality is a view of the real world with digital items overlaid onto it.

Some companies, such as Microsoft, are already working on augmented reality products, such as the protype Hololens product. 

But Zuckerberg said that delivering the ideal version of augmented reality won't happen overnight. Getting there, he said, will take anywhere from five years to 12 years.

SEE ALSO: Randi Zuckerberg is selling her boldly decorated Los Altos home for $5.49 million

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