Skip to main content

Snapchat blames users of ‘illegal third-party apps’ for nude photo hack

By
Snapchat blames users of ‘illegal third-party apps’ for nude photo hack

Last night a slew of nude pictures started showing up on 4chan. Not terribly unusual, except these were images apparently snagged from hundreds of thousands of Snapchat users.
The event has been dubbed “the Snappening,” named after a previous nude photo hack called “The Fappening.” A month ago, a group of hackers found their way into several celebrity iCloud accounts, stole nude images found there, and posted them to 4chan. Most notable among the people targeted was actress Jennifer Lawrence, who called the incident a sex crime.
This time, hackers took photos from 200,000 accounts, according to social media consultant and writer Kenny Withers. Snapchat has issued the following statement to VentureBeat in response, confirming that a hack has occured. But Snapchat makes clear that its “servers were never breached” and played no role in the hack [emphasis ours]:
We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.
The store of photos released Thursday night may have been accumulating for years, though there’s some confusion about the source of the photos. Some reports say the photos came from third-party client SnapSave. However, Business Insider is reporting that the photos came from a website called SnapSaved, which lets users save their snaps online rather than on mobile.
Snapchat’s statement confirms that a hack has indeed occurred but pushes all responsibility to the users — something the victims of this hack aren’t likely to appreciate.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game Of Thrones Game Leads Into Season 5

By
Telltale Games has kept their Game of Thrones project under tight wraps over the past year. On Tuesday, they finally shed some light on the adventure game based on the HBO show. Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series stars House Forrester. They appeared in George R. R. Martin's novel A Dance with Dragons but haven't been seen in the TV show yet. The Forresters reside in the Wolfswood in northern Westeros. Their stronghold of Ironrath has stood at the edge of Westeros' largest ironwood forest for fifteen hundred years. "Ironrath is a testament to the strength and endurance of Ironwood," Telltale explains . "The Forrester house words are 'Iron from Ice', which echoes their belief that - like the ironwood itself - the adverse conditions and unforgiving landscape of the North only makes them stronger." Like their bannermen at House Glover, the Forresters are loyal allies of the Starks. This puts them right in the middle of the War ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tesla Model S & BMW i3 Get New Skins

By
Tesla may be the most American car company nowadays, and especially once the gigafactory gets rolling. In honor of Veterans Day , Tesla rolled out a a Tesla Model S with camouflage vinyl wrap and louvered back windows. The special Model S was also stamped with a nice Twitter hashtag, #TeslaVets. It’s a nice tribute to the guys and gals who put their lives on the line in the name of the USA, and it also brings attention to the fact that one of the best ways to protect the country from some of its biggest threats, global warming and oil wars, is to go electric. But this isn’t Tesla’s first sign of support for vets. The California-based car company has also committed to hiring a lot of them . “The actual work was done by SS Customs, and also features unique camo wheels, a roof rack, and yellow military-esque headlights,” GAS2 writes . “Tesla revealed the Veterans day tribute via its Facebook page , with this simple message; ‘A heartfelt Veterans Day thank you to all wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

HTTPS As A Ranking Signal

By
Security is a top priority for Google. They invest a lot in making sure that their services use industry-leading security, like strongHTTPS encryption by defaul t. That means that people using Search, Gmail and Google Drive, for example, automatically have a secure connection to Google. Beyond their own stuff, they are also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of this is, they are making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, they have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites. They want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, They called for “ HTTPS everywhere ” on the web. They have also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS , or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging. For these reasons, over the past few months they have been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, en...
Post a Comment
Read more