Popular social media platform and photo app Instagram has revealed a flaw in its systems with which “a number of” stars’ phone numbers and email addresses were exposed to cyber-attackers.
The Facebook-owned network has emailed verified members, usually prominent figures, to let them know.
It has been stated that “one or more” attackers had targeted high-profile stars to get their contact information.
Instagram has stated that the passwords had not been stolen but warned users to watch for suspicious activity on their accounts. The security breach happened because of a bug in the company’s own proprietary software. They stated that the application programming interface (API) was at fault. But the bug has since then been fixed.
The company also warned its verified users to “be extra vigilant” regarding unexpected phone calls, texts, and emails. Instagram has over 500 million users worldwide, in which over 300 million of them use the app at least once in day,
Selena Gomez’s Instagram account was hacked, with a bunch of private pics posted on her Instagram’s account. While majority of the celeb hack victims were targeted by their iCloud accounts, Selena’s Inatgram account was hacked.
There was no leak, but the hacker did post a bunch of nude Justin Bieber photos on the account which was quickly removed after the singer regained access to her account.
While no details were provided on the way Selena Gomez was hacked, there’s a good chance the singer was a victim of a phishing attack tricking her into providing the login credentials for the Instagram account.
Phishing scams rely on websites that look legitimate and prompt users to provide their login information for various accounts, only to collect them and send the data to the hackers. This method has been around for a long time, but it’s still making victims worldwide, especially because the attacks are becoming more complex and phishing sites are harder to detect.
