SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
One or more hackers have been stealing celebrities' e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information by exploiting a bug on Instagram's servers, the company said Thursday.
Researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab said they recently spotted hackers in an underground forum advertising unnamed celebrities' personal details. In an e-mail, a Kaspersky Lab representative said the researchers privately reported a data-leaking bug to Instagram. The Kaspersky Lab researchers went on to say that exploiting the bug was "quite labor intensive" because each attack had to be done manually rather than using an automated script to bypass mathematical calculations Instagram performs to prevent abuse.
To exploit the bug, according to Kaspersky Lab, attackers used the outdated Instagram mobile app—specifically version 8.5.1, which was released last year—to select the password-reset option. To capture the request, the attackers sent it to a Web proxy rather than the real Instagram servers. The attackers then modified the captured request to substitute the username sent to the Web proxy with the username of targeted celebrities. The Instagram server would then send a JSON-formatted response that included the target's personal information. While the hackers used the outdated app to exploit the bug, the attack worked against all Instagram users, regardless of the app version they used.
A representative from the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service, meanwhile, said the exploited flaw resided in an Instagram programming interface. The representative said Instagram officials know of at least one person who actively exploited the bug.
According to Metro, this bug was also responsible for the hack into Selena Gomez's Instagram account earlier this week.
Instagram did note that no passwords were leaked as a result of this hack.
Sigh. Another day, another hack.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday September 01 2017, @05:00PM (6 children)
Hey, celebrities! Burner phones are not just for drug dealers, you know!
The phone you post your star-stuff self-advertising from, should only be used for that, and if it has a phone number, it should never ring.
Keep the nudies, address books and other passcodes on the other phone(s) (and off the web).
It won't protect you from this hack, or people hijacking insufficiently-secured social media accounts, but at least they won't find anything you haven't made public yet.
The bodyguard can carry the "social" phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:08PM (1 child)
Lies! Everyone knows burner phones are only for degenerate pieces of human garbage, and privacy is something only terrorists and rapists care about!!!
Submit citizen, we are here for your protection.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 01 2017, @08:36PM
I'm not the one who needs to submit, nor one that people are interested in seeing the naked submissions of.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday September 01 2017, @09:11PM (3 children)
My bigger question is why Instagram needs your phone number? Is it a requirement? If so, people should decline. Is it voluntary? If so, I have no sympathy for the kind of idiot who would give up their phone number for nothing but a picture sharing site.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday September 01 2017, @11:52PM (2 children)
Two-factor authentication?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 02 2017, @10:05AM (1 child)
But what if my phone number happens to be prime? Where do I get the second factor from?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:53PM
Multiply it by 1.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]