Hackers attack site of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, post racist abuse

Leslie Jones, the black comedian who starred in the recent all-female remake of Ghostbusters, has been forced to take her website down after hackers seemingly took control, posted racist abuse, personal information, and what were apparently nude pictures stolen from the actor's iCloud account

Jones, 48, has been the target of sustained online attacks for months, much of it racist and sexist in nature.

On Wednesday, hackers escalated the situation by posting a picture of the dead gorilla Harambe onto her personal Tumblr site, as well as explicit photos, her phone number and Twitter password, and screen grabs of her driver's licence and passport, according to TMZ.

Jones had become a particular target for the online alt-right movement, many of whom were angry that the Ghostbusters franchise had been relaunched with women taking the lead roles. Sustained abuse forced her off Twitter in July, but since then she has returned to tweet about the Rio Olympics in her capacity as a correspondent for the US NBC television network.

Jones has not made any comment following the hack of her website.

Twitter, meanwhile, recently announced new quality filters to help clamp down on the hoards of anonymous trolls which have plagued it in recent years.

Update

The US department of homeland security is currently probing the incident against Jones' website.

"The investigation is currently ongoing. In order to protect the integrity of the case, no further details are available at this time," officials at the US immigration and customs enforcement agency said.

Listing image by Getty Images/Gregg DeGuire/WireImage