A giant database of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos has been released by hackers who have been collecting the files for years. Shocked users of the notorious chat forum 4chan are referring to the hack as "The Snappening," noting that this is far bigger than the iCloud hacks that recently targeted celebrities. Underground photo-trading chat rooms have been filled in recent weeks with hints that something big was coming. Thursday night it finally arrived: A third-party Snapchat client app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of Snapchats that users thought had been deleted. Users of 4chan have downloaded the files and are creating a searchable database that will allow people to search the stolen images by Snapchat username. The database of Snapchat files posted online was hosted on viralpop. That site has now been suspended and taken offline, although thousands of people have already downloaded the collection of Snapchats. This is what the collection of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos looked like:.
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Users of Snapchat may have had their photographs leaked online through the apparent compromise of Snapsaved, an unrelated, third-party service that stores Snapchat photos that would otherwise have been deleted after several seconds. The incident highlights the risks users face when providing credentials to a third-party service or application that extends or modifies an original service, says Satnam Narang, senior security response manager at Symantec. As many as , leaked photographs are apparently being shared on online message boards, according to a report in the New York Times. A user of the 4chan message board claimed to have hacked the Snapsaved service to gain access to the photos, the report says. Snapchat says that its servers were never breached and were not the source of the leaks. In a statement posted to Snapsaved's Facebook account on Oct. We never wished for this to happen.
Risk Management Framework: Learn from NIST
Videos and pictures of as many as , teenagers posted via the Snapchat service and stored on a third-party website have been put online, apparently by the same people who were behind the posting of nude celebrity photos in August. That offered to let them use the service on a website on a desktop computer, rather than just on a mobile phone. It is suspected, but not so far proven, that those behind the scam are linked to those responsible for the collection and posting in August of personal and often nude photos taken by hundreds of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Kardashian.
Snapchat leaks are a scenario in which Snapchat photos are unwillingly sent to persons or to the wider internet against the will of the owners of said pictures. You hear about leaks all the time, especially when high profile names are involved, and many of these originate with the Snapchat service. You see, Snapchat allows for the sending of various messages to friends and the public at will. However, the owner of these photos chooses the desired audience before sending them. The pictures are only supposed to be temporary.
