Snapchat Hacked: 4.6 Million User Names And Phone Numbers Stolen

One of the perks of Snapchat is how the media you send over gets deleted after a short period of time, meaning that you can rest assured that anything private you send will not be permanent. Unfortunately it seems that it was recently that Snapchat has experienced a security breach whereby they have managed to get ahold of Snapchat’s 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers and have posted it as a downloadable database a few days ago, although at this time of posting the website appears to have been suspended. Ironically enough Snapchat was alerted to several exploits by a security group called Gibson Security, but released a statement in which they claimed to have safeguards in place.

As it stands the hackers have blurred out the last two digits of each user’s phone number and have indicated that they might be willing to turn the data over to the right party, although it seems that their motives were just to let raise public awareness. According to the anonymous group of hackers, “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. It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does. The company was too reluctant at patching the exploit until they knew it was too late and companies that we trust with our information should be more careful when dealing with it.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Hacking, Snapchat