While hackers say they have broken into a giant Snapchat database filled with Snapchat photos and videos and have been collecting files for years, the content messaging service denies it was hacked.
Users on the chat forum 4chan today have been referring to the incident as The Snappening, comparing it to the iCloud hack that released dozens of nude photos of celebrities to the Internet.
According to one published report, a third-party Snapchat client app accessed a 13Gb library of photo and video files for years. Snapchat users thought the library had been deleted.
Users of 4chan allegedly downloaded the photo and video files and plan to make a database that is searchable by Snapchat user name.
In a statement today, Snapchat denied its servers had been hacked.
“We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks,” the statement read. “Snapchatters were victimised by their use of third party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.”
If it were a security breach, it would not be Snapchat’s first. In January, the site’s SnapchatDB database was hacked and 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers were released. The hackers later stated they wanted to reveal to users a security hole that Snapchat had not attempted to fix.
After that incident, Snapchat said it had beefed up security around its site.
IDG News Service
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