Well, this is incredibly awkward.
Last week’s massive leak of hacked celebrity nude pictures sent the internet into a serious tailspin as everyone rushed to right click and save them and / or write lengthy editorials and open letters condemning them. The good people of New Zealand were apparently in the former camp. Well, at least some of them were.
The Sydney Morning Herald report that, over the weekend, the country was hit by a serious malware attack linked to the celebrity photo leak. Fake links to nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities led to dodgy software which, when installed by “a handful of users”, managed to bring down the country’s major internet provider, Spark.
The problem began Friday night, when Spark’s system became overloaded by “a high amount of traffic to overseas sites”. All told, nearly 600,000 customers were affected, and it took Spark until Sunday to fully repair the problem. Internet users have been warned not to click on any links or open any email attachments (duh) purporting to lead to the nudes.
In other news, over the weekend, content sharing giant Reddit finally got around to shutting down The Fappening, the fastest-growing subgroup in the site’s history, in which users shared and commented on the leaked photos. You can read their long and winding explanation here if you so desire.
Jennifer Lawrence is still very disappointed in you.
Photo: Mike Coppolla via Getty Images
