An attack on Snapchat exposes the information of millions of users
This year 2014 has not started on the right foot for the application Snapchat And after its growing success in 2013, when it has increased its investments and its number of users, it is time to be humble after discovering a failure with which the data of millions of its users have been made public All this after a attack on New Year's Day which, according to the hackers who carried it out, took place to demonstrate that privacy and security of the application are not priority points for those responsible.
Thus, during the first day of the year a web page with the name SnapchatDB.info appeared showing the information of nothing else and nothing fewer than 4.6 million Snapchat users, most of them North American Data ranging from name User up to email and your phone number Necessary questions for create a user account in this application and that have been publicly revealed to, according to those responsible for the attack, create social pressure on Snapchat
Despite the fact that at first this attack was taken as a hoax, various specialized media and users have verified that, among the data made public, were theirs. And it is that SnapchatDB has published a list with all the stolen information.Of course, removing multiple digits from phone numbers to prevent spam and abuse
The rumors about the insecurity of Snapchat are not new, and the fact is that recently the company has already had to deny its allegedvulnerabilities, although in an imprecise way and throwing balls out. Now it has been proven that it does have exploits or back doors that, with the right knowledge and tools, can be exploited to gain access to compromised user data. Although it is not about the videos and photos shared through the application, this time it directly affects the user's information.
Although the web page where the data was published has been removed, those responsible have contacted the media outlet TechCrunch to make it clear your intentions.And it is that they seek that, despite the problem of the scarce resources of startups or recently created companies, the focus is placed on the user security, and not in order to achieve expansion at any price. They also comment on what kind of trick they have used to obtain this information so that those responsible for Snapchat can block and secure it.
There is currently a web page created especially to check whether user data has been acquired. Simply enter the username in the search engine. In case the data has leaked after the attack, it is recommended to access the application and delete the account from the menu Settings At the moment Snapchat has not ruled on the matter, so we will have to wait to find out more details about this attack and about the security measures that, after all, you should include in your instant messaging and ephemeral content application.
