The American singer Ariana Grande decided to take the hacker network responsible for one of the most severe leaks in the music industry to court.
According to court documents filed in a Los Angeles court, the artist filed a lawsuit against two individuals whose exact identity is still unknown – legally registered under the name John Does – for illegal access, theft and unauthorized commercialization of her work and personal life material.
The main objective of the legal action is to obtain the necessary judicial authorization to issue subpoenas to track the digital activity of the attackers and reveal their real identities. According to the file cited by media such as Variety and the BBC, the defendants carried out sophisticated phishing campaigns and systematic infiltrations between 2019 and 2024, targeting key collaborators in the interpreter's professional circle, including photographers, producers and sound engineers.
Among the incidents detailed in the complaint is the unauthorized access in 2019 to the Dropbox account of a photographer on his team, as well as the hacking in 2020 of the mobile phone of one of his producers, from where unreleased masters, studio recordings and demos were stolen.
The critical point of this digital espionage scheme was reached in 2023, when hackers leaked a batch of 45 unreleased songs before their publication. Later, in 2024, those involved created fake web domains and email accounts to impersonate a collaborator and deceive the artist's technical staff.
The stolen content was sold on the dark web for “significant sums of money,” undermining control over the artist's creative process. Representatives of the singer noted that this malicious intrusion caused “substantial and irreparable harm,” and emphasized that the lawsuit seeks to set a deterrent precedent to ensure that artists can freely decide how and when to share their art with the public.
