SnapChat Security Tested By Hackers, Went Successful In Leaking Out 4.6 Million Usernames And Phone Numbers

Launching a startup is no doubt a big achievement but security and privacy matters first. Social networking platforms needs a high security in order to protect users information. Snapchat, which is one of the most popular photo sharing app developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, was recently tested by hackers on Tuesday and they went successful in leaking out 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers. This time the hacking was not about taking advantage of users information but only to inform the company about their weak security and privacy. Hackers posted the information on the website called SnapchatDB.info according to many sources. The information was available for everyone on the internet in the form of CSV file and SQL dump and anyone can download the information and can take advantage of that. The domain is now suspended but it leaves a question mark on Snapchat security.



This is what hackers said to Techcrunch about the this hacking attempt,

"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,"

Thier main motive was to make users aware that how reckless these internet companies are with users information. After seeing this attempt , this is what SnapChat company responded,

"Theoretically, if someone were able to upload a huge set of phone numbers, like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the U.S., they could create a database of the results and match usernames to phone numbers that way. 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,"

SnapChat might lose some of its users after this attempt and might put other internet companies in the consideration mode about their companies security and privacy.