Ariana Grande Sues Hackers for Leaking Unreleased Music and Footage — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Ariana Grande filed suit Monday in Los Angeles against unnamed John Doe hackers, alleging phishing and hacking schemes caused "unlawful and egregious theft" of unreleased songs and recording-session footage.
- The lawsuit claims hackers didn't target Grande directly but breached personal accounts of photographers and producers who worked with her, then sold the stolen content for "significant sums of money."
- The complaint documents hundreds of leaks spanning back to Grande's 2011 music debut, including a 2019 breach of a Dropbox account belonging to one of her photographers.
- In 2020, defendants allegedly hacked a collaborating producer's mobile device, gaining access to unreleased masters, demos, and recording-session footage.
- In 2023 alone, hackers obtained access to 45 of Grande's unreleased songs and leaked them — the most dramatic single-year escalation in the pattern.
- In 2024, hackers allegedly created a Gmail account and domain impersonating a photographer to trick a digital technician into handing over unreleased photos belonging to Grande.
- Grande's legal team is suing to unmask the anonymous defendants "in order to hold them accountable" and deter future conduct, citing the need to protect "herself and others."
Why it matters: By suing to unmask anonymous defendants, Grande is using discovery to flip a pattern of untraceable supply-chain attacks — phishing her photographers and producers rather than breaching her directly — into identifiable defendants. The 45-song 2023 leak shows the scale: if courts force disclosure of the John Does, the ruling could expose the buyers and resellers who profit from stolen celebrity content.
Ask SkimNews
