HOW HACKERS CAN STEAL PICTURES FROM YOUR PHONE
Miss Johnasson is likely to have had the photographs stolen by hackers after she tried to email them, experts explained.
Other possibilities include hackers infecting her phone with malicious software, or taking the data from a computer paired to the phone via a virus.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, told the BBC: ‘My guess is that, even if these photos were taken on Scarlett Johansson's phone, she would then maybe have emailed them to somebody.
‘Then, either their email got hacked or they were in her sent folder in her online email account - that would be the most natural way.’
Orla Cox, Norton Internet Security Expert, added: ‘Smartphones such as iPhones are only as secure as you make them.
If you don’t have a passcode, and leave it lying it around, people can easily steal directly from you, simply by picking it up and sending pictures direct from the phone.
‘Even if you have a passcode, a determined hacker can often guess – many people use simple combinations such as 1,2,3,4 or repeated digits.
Hackers may have attacked the PC the iPhone was ‘paired’ with and stolen pictures that way.
Sophisticated modern hackers do their research on targets and create tailor-made attacks which play on the victim’s personal interests.
These type of hackers tend to be organised criminals who use socially-engineered deceptions to breach computer and smart phone security.
Socially engineered attacks use details culled from sites such as Facebook to ‘trick’ the user into installing software – sending emails that appear to be from a friend, but that install malicious software that let them ‘control’ a victim’s PC.
If any lesson is learned, it is that if you don't want explicit pictures spread online, don't take them and send them around in the first place.