On New Year’s Eve, hackers released the partially redacted phone numbers and user names of 4.6 million Snapchat users. The company finally responded to the security breach with a statement explaining what happened. In its statement, the company confirmed the existence of the exploit that allowed the breach to occur. In this specific case, the exploit took advantage of a security hole in the Find Friends feature, which was added to make it easier for Snapchat users to find their friends using their address book. Although the user names and phone numbers were compromised, Snapchat confirmed that no other information, including Snaps, were accessed in this breach.
The company also confirmed that it is working on an updated version of the Snapchat application that will allow users to opt out of the Find Friends feature. It is also taking measures to prevent future abuse of the service. To make it easy for security researchers to contact the company, Snapchat has setup an email account ([email protected]), dedicated to security vulnerabilities as well.
Despite the company’s statements, many users are done using Snapchat given the recent events. What about you? Will you keep using Snapchat or is it time to move on?
Source: Snapchat (blog)
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