Snapchat hack attack hits users with ‘smoothie’ spam
Snapchat photo sharing site gets hacked, users hit by spam images of delicious fruit smoothies.
Snapchat users are getting spammed with pictures of fruit smoothies. The spam message takes recipients to a URL of a company called Snapfroot, which redirects the users to an AllRecipes.com page for a “Berry Delicious” smoothie.
Snapchat says that a small number of its users were affected by the hack. The auto-destruct picture sharing service added that they have put in additional measures to secure accounts as well as urged users to change their passwords.
“It’s mostly like cases where someone has your e-mail address and password and gets in on the first try,” an anonymous Snapchat spokesperson told Wired. “We’re not seeing any evidence of brute-force tactics.” The spokesperson advised users to stay away from third-party apps that ask for your Snapchat username and password.
“Yesterday a small number of our users experienced a spam incident where unwanted photos were sent from their accounts,” a Snapchat representative told CNET. “Our security team deployed additional measures to secure accounts. We recommend using unique and strong passwords to prevent abuse.”
This is the second hack of the photo sharing site, in December last year more than 4.6 million user names and phone numbers were leaked and posted online on snapchatdb.info. Snapchat promised to make the app more secure and added an option to opt out of ‘Find Friends’ feature which stores usernames and phone numbers for searching friends. Snapchat also set up an email address, that white-hat hackers can use to notify the company of potential exploits, named security@snapchat.com. Apart from snapchat, social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo were also hacked recently and usernames of more than 2 million users were posted online.
Source: CNET