Snapchat may not find the New Year too welcoming after finding out that over 4.6 million accounts were hacked, affecting usernames and phone numbers.
The BBC reports say that the hackers uploaded the hacked usernames and phone numbers online temporarily in a website called "SnapchatDB" and later took it down. In a cached version, it shows the data with the last two digits of the hacked phone numbers blurred.
Gibson Security wasn't at all surprised as the firm has been warning the app that there are security vulnerabilities in their system for months. "We know nothing about SnapchatDB, but it was a matter of time till something like that happened," the Australian-based firm tweeted.
The hackers aren't too keen at keeping their methods clouded in secrecy, as they claimed they exploited the security weakness highlighted by Gibson Security beforehand. In a post by Tech Crunch, the hackers says," We used a modified version of gibsonsec's exploit/method," the hackers claim," and continues, "Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed."
The app has grown a huge following, allowing users to share pictures which delete themselves after being viewed. Find Friends is yet another feature of Snapchat that allows users to upload their address book contacts in order to find other people they may know who are also users of the app.
In a report published by the firm on December 25, Gibson Security says that it has been warning the app that the vulnerabilities can easily reveal the phone numbers of its users. While the app claims that they have created better advances to heighten the security, Gibson Security says that there's nothing that's been improved upon.
"Over the past year we've implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult to do. We recently added additional counter-measures and continue to make improvements to combat spam and abuse," the app posts in a blog last week.
Hackers are in complete agreement with Gibson Security saying the measures taken by the app were not strong enough.
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