Hackers broke into Snapchat, the hugely popular mobile app, accessing the phone numbers and usernames of 4.6mn users and publishing them online, tech news website TechCrunch has announced.
The numbers were partially masked when they were briefly published on SnapchatDB.info, and the unidentified hackers told TechCrunch they had done this “to convince the messaging app to beef up its security”.
Snapchat said on Thursday that it would be releasing an updated version of its hit app after the security breach.
Snapchat, which allows people to send smartphone photos or video snippets timed to self-destruct 10 seconds or less after being opened, has become hugely popular among teenagers who are easing away from Facebook.
But Australian firm Gibson Security warned last week that glitches in the application could be exploited by hackers.
“Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue,” the hackers said in a statement, published on TechCrunch late on Wednesday. “It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does.
“You wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant that spends millions on decoration, but barely anything on cleanliness.”
Created by students at Stanford University in 2011, Snapchat reportedly rejected a $3bn offer from Facebook last year.
In a blog post, Snapchat confirmed the New Year’s Eve breach and said no other information was leaked or accessed.
It did not specify when it would be issuing the updated version of the app.
The fix will allow users to opt out of appearing in the “Find Friends” feature after they have verified their phone number.
“The Snapchat community is a place where friends feel comfortable expressing themselves and we’re dedicated to preventing abuse,” it said.
Snapchat, providing the e-mail address [email protected], said that it wanted to “make sure that security experts can get ahold of us when they discover new ways to abuse our service so that we can respond quickly to address those concerns”.