A US man has pleaded not guilty to hacking the email accounts of celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson, whose nude photos ended up online.

Christopher Chaney from Jacksonville, Florida faces 26 charges, including unauthorised access to a computer and wiretapping.

If convicted, he faces up to 121 years in prison. A trial is set for December.

Johansson has told Vanity Fair magazine the leaked photos were meant for her ex-husband Ryan Reynolds.

"There's nothing wrong with that," she said in an interview. "It's not like I was shooting a porno."

A man who confessed to hacking into Miley Cyrus' private email account has escaped a prison sentence.

Josh Holly, 21, admitted to gaining unauthorised access to the singer/actress' MySpace.com profile in late 2007 and then took to cyberspace to brag about obtaining semi-naked photos of Cyrus from her mailbox.

Police seized his computer from his home in Nashville, Tennessee and he was arrested last December and charged with possession of unauthorised credit card account numbers, a claim he denied.

By Ken Hess | October 31, 2011, 7:58am PDT

Summary: Is there a Hacker Gene? Is the hacker personality a learned set of behaviors? Research suggests that both are at work.

Identifying criminal hackers is no easy task even for the most gifted white hats. And, while we can’t readily match a name or names to specific criminal compromises, there are things we can know about those behind the masks. It’s often easy enough to identify the hacker’s country of origin, the tools he used, the hacker’s style and his skill level. But, what about finding the actual person or persons behind the masks? That’s becoming easier too because of our observations of the personality types involved in these activities.

Gary McKinnon's extradition case must not be allowed to stumble on

America may feel bolstered in the wake of the Baker review, but Gary McKinnon deserves to be tried in the correct jurisdiction

Gary McKinnon's computer hacking case has dragged on for a decade. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

This week, the Conservative MP Dominic Raab, with the backing of Labour's Keith Vaz and the Lib Dems' Sir Menzies Campbell, will try to win a full Commons debate on Britain's extradition laws. It could not come at a more pertinent time for Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, and whose case has now dragged on for a decade.