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Confessions App "Whisper" Spills Almost a Billion Records

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-didn't-know-you-were-into-that! dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow420:

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.

The Washington Post

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:33PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:33PM (#972866)

    Sails of toilet paper do not stand up well to what sailors call "weather".

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=1, Funny=1, Touché=2, Total=4
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   4  

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:42PM (#972871)

    If you need to conserve TP, use the US Marine method...
    1- Tear off one square of TP.
    2- Poke your left index finger thru the middle.
    3- Wipe your butt hole with your left index fingertip.
    4- Pull tissue off finger along with the nugget stuck on your fingertip.
    5- Don't eat food with your left hand.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:19PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:19PM (#972899) Journal

    Now he has Yaaar'ds and Yaaaaar'ds of P.P. (Pirate Paper)

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---