Hundreds Of Thousands Of Snapchat Photos And Videos Intercepted By Hackers now leaked #SnapChat Hacks
The database of a Snapchat image-saving
service which many think is SnapSave, has allegedly been hacked, and
the hackers have claimed on 4chan that they have around 200,000 NSFW
images sent by SnapChat users to their friends or near and dear ones.
A
giant database of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos has been
released by hackers who have been collecting the files for years ala the
iCloud Hacks. The users of 4Chan have named this hack as “The
Snappening,” while we will call it SnapChat Hacks.
The
database is said to contain 200,000 images of SnapChat users. This makes
the hack far bigger than the now famous iCloud Hacks, the only
difference being that these images pertain to users of SnapChat and it
is hoped that they are not connected to celebrities. Well the hope may
be short lived, if the SnapChat users may have been circulating Celebs
NSFW images, they are bound to spring up in this leak.
SnapChat
is a online messaging and image sending service with a unique quality
of self destroying messages. Given its nature of self destructing, users
generally use it for sexting or sending/receiving NSFW images, which
they think would have destroyed once viewed by the opposite party.
Something huge was coming
The underground forums and underground photo trading and image hosting
websites were agog with the news of something big was coming. It was
given to understand that somebody was going to leak a handsome cache of
NSFW images but the date was not known. The leak finally arrived
yesterday.
SnapChat not hacked
Readers should note that SnapChat itself was not hacked but a third party (more
on it below) SnapChat image saving App seems to be the culprit.
Reports suggest that a third-party Snapchat client app has been
collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years,
giving hackers access to a 13GB library of Snapchats that users thought
had been deleted.
Users of 4chan have downloaded the
files, and are currently in the process of creating a searchable
database allowing people to search the stolen images by Snapchat
username. However the files are not hosted on 4Chan given the strict
copyright violation policy being implement by the 4Chan admin post the
iCloud Hacks.
ViralPop.com
Reports
indicate that the entire 13GB database of Snapchat files posted online
was uploaded on a site called viralpop.com. ViralPop itself has now been
suspended and taken offline as of now but not before thousands of
curious people had already downloaded the collection of Snapchats
images.
SnapSave
Preliminary reports
indicate that not one but two SnapChat clients servers were hacked.
First reports appearing on Dagbladet.no indicated that a third party
SnapChat client called SnapSave was hacked. SnapSave was a working
Android App which allowed the SnapChat users to save the otherwise
destructive messages. If a user had both SnapChat and SnapSave
installed on his/her smartphone or tablet, this once popular Android app
allowed users to keep Snapchat photos and videos, which otherwise would
automatically delete when viewed through the official Snapchat app.
Image taken during a review of SnapSave on www.comboupdates.com
Post the Gibson Security expose on SnapChats vulnerability in December, 2013 and a subsequent 4.6 million username and passwords leak in Jan, 2014
meant that Snapchat improved and enhanced it security. This also
meant that SnapSave had to shut shop as SnapChat started encrypting
photos and videos sent by the its users.
The other hack
Another source told BusinessInsider that the hacked third party App was actually SnapSaved. BusinessInsider post says that,
But an anonymous photo trader contacted Business Insider to inform us that the site affected was actually SnapSaved.com. The service acted as a web client for the Snapchat app that allowed users to receive photos and videos, and save them online. What its users didn’t realize was that the site was quietly collecting everything that passed through it, storing incriminating Snapchats on a web server, with the usernames of senders attached.
The Index of SnapSaved parent directory
However
SnapSaved also met the same fate as SnapSave. It too disappeared
several months ago. Now the URL redirects to a Danish e-commerce site
that sells set-top boxes and television antennas. But multiple evidence
point towards the fact that it may indeed have been SnapSaved that was
hacked. For one, the majority of the intercepted Snapchat photographs
posted online featured overlaid messages in Danish. And other important
evidence is the image given below from 4Chan which also suggests that
it was SnapSaved which was hacked.
As
of now it is not clear which third party App or website was hacked or
created for the sole purpose of intercepting user images. What we know
is that there is a vast image cache of 13 gigs and is said to contain
pedophilia images. Though the images may not be necessarily sent by
pedophiles because 50% of Snapchat’s users are teenagers aged between 13
and 17 and they do share images with the trust that these share images
will be deleted immediately once the receiver views them. Users are
warned that watching/sharing/promoting ped images is a federal offence
in many countries including USA.
SnapChat has not yet commented on the above said leaks,
SnapChat says it is not at fault, anonymous leaker says sorry for the leaks…Read about it here #SnapChat Hacks
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