According to cyber security researcher Jamie Sanchez, a vulnerability in the Snapchat app opens the iPhone up to denial-of-service attacks that can cause the device to freeze and crash. The vulnerability can allow a hacker to send thousands of messages to a Snapchat user in seconds, which can cause a crash that requires a hard reset to fix. Tokens generated by the app used to verify user identity can be reused by hackers to send the flood of messages. Sanchez mentioned the following regarding the matter:
By reusing old tokens, hackers can send massive amounts of messages using powerful computers. This method could be used by spammers to send messages in mass quantities to numerous users, or it could be used to launch a cyber attack on specific individuals.
For those of you who didn’t know, Snapchat has faced multiple problems as its private messaging app has grown in popularity, including vulnerabilities that allowed users to bypass screenshot notifications and a recent security breach that ended up compromising the user names and phone numbers of more than 4.6 million customers, which Snapchat was warned about ahead of time by a security group.
Snapchat mentioned that it was unaware of the problem but was interested in learning more when asked about this particular vulnerability.
Source: Jamie Sanchez via The Los Angeles Times
Connect With Us
Message