Many celebrities had their Instagram hacked because of a bug in the app’s API
This is a bad time for Instagram and for its most high-profile users. This week on Wednesday, the photo sharing platform revealed that hackers managed to attack a number of accounts belonging to celebrities or public persons, and stole their private information. For this vulnerability, the platform blamed a system bug. Fortunately, the technicians have taken measures and solved the problem.
Hack targeting high-profile users
Instagram had to pay a big price for a bug in its API. This was the gateway of at least one hacker who targeted the accounts of several celebrities, and managed to gain access to their personal information. They managed to find out the email address and phone number of these people but, fortunately, the passwords remained safe.
Even so, this is an alarming situation. The app has over 700 million monthly users, so a security risk can mean a lot for these people’s privacy. Also, if a public person’s contact information lends in the hands of the wrong people, they might be put in unpleasant situations, or be the victims of illegal actions.
This is not the first hack suffered by Instagram this week
This announcement came soon after another popular hack shook Instagram. The person with the highest number of followers, Selena Gomez, had her profile hacked, and nude photos of Justin Bieber, her ex-boyfriend, ended up on her public account. Instagram intervened immediately, and Gomez regained control of her account.
However, the platform didn’t reveal if these two attacks were related, or who was affected by the second leak. The only thing Instagram mentioned was the fact that celebrities were the targets.
“At this point we believe this effort was targeted at high-profile users so, out of an abundance of caution, we are notifying our verified account holders of this issue.”
Instagram is, indeed, concerned about the security of its users, regardless of their status. However, the platform should pay more attention to its vulnerabilities, and try to prevent hack attacks, instead of having to suffer their consequences.
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