Snapchat, the infamous messaging app mostly used by teenagers to send texts that ‘self-destruct’ after a short period of time has been struck by a firestorm thanks to a giant database of Snapchat photos and videos that have been compromised thanks to the malevolent efforts of hackers who were adding the photos and videos to their collection.
Users of the chat forum called 4chan are referring to the hacked event as ‘The Snappening,’indicating that this particular is far bigger in size compared to the two events which involved celebrity photos being leaked online thanks to a vulnerability present in Apple’s iCloud. The total size of the video and photo library is equivalent of around 13 GB. The content was reportedly coming from popular Snapchat client Snapsave or SnapSaved.com, both of which gave users access to save photos and videos that they had received.
According to Snapchat, the company has claimed that their servers are secure and that they are not the source of the leaked photographs. According to Business Insider, Snapchat confirmed that the hack did not take place from their end and that users were victimized thanks to the use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, which is a practice that has been severely discouraged by Snapchat’s terms of use primarily because they end up compromising the security for the user.
The database of the photos and videos belonging to Snapchat users were posted online on viralpop.com, which happens to be a fake competition website that had installed malicious software on user’s systems that were taking part in the fake competition. Although the site has been taken down, it still does not help the case in which thousands of videos and images have been downloaded over a short period of time.
