Snapchat Hacks Mean Keeping Details Hidden Might Be A Good Idea

Whether you’re an avid or casual Snapchat user, and whether you send pretty pictures of flowers, or the rampant male genitalia the app is infamous for, you might want to keep all details of your Snapchat account private for a while. A four-month old hack which Snapchat failed to do anything about has been made public, and certain security assumptions that may have been made are now shattered.

The Australian-based group behind the hack is Gibson Security, who notified Snapchat of vulnerabilities in their code months ago. ZDNet reports that after the massive new startup ignored it, Gibson has now published the Snapchat API and the code for two exploits, which anyone can now use.

Many publish their Snapchat username on other forms of social media, confident that the connection to their name, phone number, and other details can’t be made. But that’s no longer the case. According to Gibson Security, it’s quite easy now to track down someone’s Snapchat username and attach it to a phone number, being able to search within specific geographical areas, and the entire snafu could have been fixed with “10 lines of code”.

One can only hope the embarassment will force Snapchat to take the problem seriously. Until then, a non-proliferation strategy is best for Snapchat details.

[Young Businessman] via Shutterstock


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