Cameron Diaz has called the release of hacked naked photos of celebrities “a gross violation” as a trailer for her latest film Sex Tape appeared on a leaked intimate video of a Downton Abbey actress.
The Hollywood star said the hackers would be "caught and made examples of" after they claimed to have amassed images of 101 women including Jennifer Lawrence and Cara Delevigne.
But just hours after her comments, a trailer for Sex Tape, the story of an explicit video accidentally made public, appeared before a 47-second video recorded by a naked Jessica Brown Findlay, who plays Downton Abbey's Lady Sybil.
The clip, called ‘Jessica Brown Findlay Leaked by Hacker’, was uploaded to the Dailymotion site on Wednesday – the day the Hollywood stars were promoting Sex Tape in the UK.
Bosses said the link was purely coincidental as adverts are automatically added to uploaded videos.
It comes 24 hours after it emerged that the FBI is investigating reports that the theft was the work of an underground hacking and picture trading ring that had been amassing the photos for months.
The images that been leaked so far on websites including 4chan are only believed to be a small portion of a huge collection of explicit photographs.
Diaz told ITV the leaking of the images was “a gross violation” and the hackers should put themselves in the place of people who had fallen victim.
She said: “Whoever has done it, they will be caught and made examples of. This can happen to anyone. If these guys can do it to this group of people then everyone's vulnerable to it.”
Earlier Dan Stevens, who used to co-star in Downton Abbey with Brown Findlay, criticised the "despicable behaviour" of the hackers and warned that people should abide by the same moral code online as they do in the real world.
Stevens said he was "really feeling" for Brown Findlay, who is seeking to remove all trace of leaked images claiming they have caused “extreme distress and embarrassment”.
Speaking during a live webchat on The Guardian website, he said: I'm really feeling for her [Brown Findlay] this week as she fell victim to some pretty despicable behaviour, not only on the part of this strange new breed of hacker, but also the press and this pathetic culture of clickbaiting.
"We're at a crucial crossroads where we need to examine our online moral and ethical practice and align it much more with our 'real life' conscience."
Technology experts had claimed that the hacker or hackers may have accessed the images via a “vulnerability” in the security system for Apple’s iCloud wireless data storage service.
However, Apple confirmed on Tuesday that hackers had not breached its systems.
"When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilised Apple’s engineers to discover the source," a spokesman said.
"After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet.
None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved."
Brown Findlay, 24, has threatened legal action against anyone who refers to images and videos that were released.
Jennifer Lawrence's publicist Liz Mahoney called the leaked photographs "a flagrant violation of privacy" and said the actress had asked US authorities to prosecute whoever is posting the photos.
A spokesman for Dailymotion said: “There was no intended targeting, we’ll review appropriately and separate the ad from this content if needed.”
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