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from the I-didn't-know-you-were-into-that! dept.
Confessions app Whisper spills almost a billion records:
Researchers who uncovered a data exposure from mobile app Whisper earlier this week have released more details about the incident.
Whisper is an app from MediaLab, a mobile app company that owns a host of other apps including the popular messaging service Kik. It offers a kind of anonymous social network service that allows people to post their innermost fears and desires, supposedly without risk.
Its users post everything from dark family secrets to stories of infidelity. It gathers these up and uses them for articles on its website, including "Naughty Nannies Confess To Sleeping With The Fathers They Work For", "Alcoholism Runs In My Family", and "I Married The Wrong Person".
The problem, according to researcher Dan Ehrlich of cybersecurity consultancy Twelve Security, is that Whisper didn't steward that data very well. He says that he and his colleague Matthew Porter accessed 900m records in a 5 TB database spanning 75 different servers, logged between the app's release in 2012 and the present day. The data was stored in plain text on ElasticSearch servers and included 90 metadata points per account.
The Washington Post broke the story about the app on Monday 10 March, having worked with the researchers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kitsune008 on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:46PM (5 children)
The only secrets that stay secret, are secrets never shared...ever.
I guess that 'Whisper' can rebrand itself to 'Shout Out', and keep on going as it has been. ;-)
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:54PM (3 children)
. . . protected by ROT17 !!!
"The government selected ROT17 because two applications of it will not revert the ciphertext back to plain text.", the senator explained.
"...and furthermore", the senator added, "we chose ROT17 because 17 is a prime number unlike 13."
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:56PM (2 children)
I see it's being peddled by republican senators, then, eh...
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:01PM (1 child)
Dianne Feinstein [cyberscoop.com] is not Republican. So it's not only Republicans.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:31AM
Since Harvey Milk and that other guy got assassinated. Go read about her crackdown on marijuana when SF would otherwise have have bee n openly flaunting it (like Berkeley more or less did.) since the 1970s. Instead she's been peddling for the authority complex for 50+ years and nobody has bothered to do their part to take her out of office, instead she's risen to the top, like stink from shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:30PM
Yup, when I do something dumb, I keep it to myself, otherwise she will never let me forget it.
(Note: This assumes that it won't cause knock-on problems for anyone else...)