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How to hack an Instagram account? The answer to this question is difficult to find, but a bug bounty hunter just did it without too many difficulties. Belgian bug bounty hunter Arne Swinnen discovered two vulnerabilities in image-sharing social network Instagram that allowed him to brute-force Instagram account passwords and take over user accounts with minimal efforts. Both brute-force attack issues were exploitable due to Instagram's weak password policies and its practice of using incremental user IDs. "This could have allowed an attacker to compromise many accounts without any user interaction, including high-profile ones," Swinnen wrote in a blog post describing details of both vulnerabilities. Brute-Force Attack Using Mobile Login API Swinnen discovered that an attacker could have performed brute force attack against any Instagram account via its Android authentication API URL, due to improper security implementations. According to his blog post , fo...

Watch out! Facebook-owned photo-sharing service has recently patched a critical vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to compromise any Instagram account without requiring any interaction from the targeted users. Instagram is growing quickly—and with the most popular social media network in the world after Facebook, the photo-sharing network absolutely dominates when it comes to user engagement and interactions. Despite having advanced security mechanisms in place, bigger platforms like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Instagram are not completely immune to hackers and contain severe vulnerabilities. Some vulnerabilities have recently been patched , some are still under the process of being fixed, and many others most likely do exist, but haven't been found just yet. Details of one such critical vulnerability in Instagram surfaced today on the Internet that could have allowed a remote attacker to reset the password for any Instagram account and take complete contr...

Ever wonder how to hack Instagram or how to hack a facebook account? Well, someone just did it! But, remember, even responsibly reporting a security vulnerability could end up in taking legal actions against you. An independent security researcher claims he was threatened by Facebook after he responsibly revealed a series of security vulnerabilities and configuration flaws that allowed him to successfully gained access to sensitive data stored on Instagram servers , including: Source Code of Instagram website SSL Certificates and Private Keys for Instagram Keys used to sign authentication cookies Personal details of Instagram Users and Employees Email server credentials Keys for over a half-dozen critical other functions However, instead of paying him a reward, Facebook has threatened to sue the researcher of intentionally withholding flaws and information from its team. Wesley Weinberg , a senior security researcher at Synack, participated in Facebook's b...

Are you curious about who viewed your profile on Instagram? This is probably the most frequently asked question nowadays, and there are several applications available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, which claims to offer you the opportunity to see who is looking at your Instagram profile. But, should we believe them? Is there really some kind of way out to know who viewed your Instagram profile? The shortest answer to all these questions is ' NO ', such functionality does not exist on Instagram at the moment. But, thousands of users still have hope and hackers are taking advantage of this to target a broad audience. Recently, security researchers have discovered some malicious applications on Android Google Play Store as well as iOS App Store, which are entirely a hoax, targeting Instagram users. The iOS app is named " InstaCare - Who cares with me? " and is one of the top apps in Germany, while the Android app is dubbed ...

If you also found yourself logged out of Facebook on Friday, you are not alone. Facebook forced more than 90 million users to log out and back into their accounts in response to a massive data breach. On Friday afternoon, the social media giant disclosed that some unknown hackers managed to exploit three vulnerabilities in its website and steal data from 50 million users and that as a precaution, the company reset access tokens for nearly 90 million Facebook users. We covered a story yesterday based upon the information available at that time. Facebook Hack: 10 Important Updates You Need To Know About However, in a conference call [ Transcript 1 , Transcript 2 ] with reporters, Facebook vice president of product Guy Rosen shared a few more details of the terrible breach, which is believed to be the most significant security blunder in Facebook's history. Here's below we have briefed the new developments in the Facebook data breach incident that you need to know abo...

Some of the biggest security problems start quietly. No alerts. No warnings. Just small actions that seem normal but aren't. Attackers now know how to stay hidden by blending in, and that makes it hard to tell when something's wrong. This week's stories aren't just about what was attacked—but how easily it happened. If we're only looking for the obvious signs, what are we missing right in front of us? Here's a look at the tactics and mistakes that show how much can go unnoticed. ⚡ Threat of the Week Apple Zero-Click Flaw in Messages Exploited to Deliver Paragon Spyware — Apple disclosed that a security flaw in its Messages app was actively exploited in the wild to target civil society members in sophisticated cyber attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-43200, was addressed by the company in February as part of iOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 17.7.5, macOS Sequoia 15.3.1, macOS Sonoma 14.7.4, macOS Ventura 13.7.4, watchOS 11.3.1, and visionOS 2.3.1. The Citizen Lab said it u...

Cybersecurity today is less about single attacks and more about chains of small weaknesses that connect into big risks. One overlooked update, one misused account, or one hidden tool in the wrong hands can be enough to open the door. The news this week shows how attackers are mixing methods—combining stolen access, unpatched software, and clever tricks to move from small entry points to large consequences.  For defenders, the lesson is clear: the real danger often comes not from one major flaw, but from how different small flaws interact together. ⚡ Threat of the Week WhatsApp Patches Actively Exploited Flaw — WhatsApp addressed a security vulnerability in its messaging apps for Apple iOS and macOS that it said may have been exploited in the wild in conjunction with a recently disclosed Apple flaw in targeted zero-day attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2025-55177 relates to a case of insufficient authorization of linked device synchronization messages. The Meta-owned company ...

The very popular Pop star Taylor Swift became the latest celebrity to have their social media accounts hacked on Tuesday. The 25-year-old " Shake It Off " singer, who has the fourth-most popular Twitter account with 51.4 million followers, appeared to be asking her millions of followers to follow @veriuser and @lizzard. Swift confirmed that her Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked on Tuesday afternoon, and also that the rogue posts were quickly removed from the social media websites. " My Twitter got hacked but don't worry, Twitter is deleting the hacker tweets and locking my account until they can figure out how this happened and get me new passwords ," said a statement posted on Swift's personal Tumblr page. The accounts were taken for just 15 minutes, but when it belongs to Taylor Swift, that makes it a big hit. At the time, a Tweet went out from @TaylorSwift13 to her millions of fans, saying, " go follow my boy, @lizzard :) " Yes Li...

Security, trust, and stability — once the pillars of our digital world — are now the tools attackers turn against us. From stolen accounts to fake job offers, cybercriminals keep finding new ways to exploit both system flaws and human behavior. Each new breach proves a harsh truth: in cybersecurity, feeling safe can be far more dangerous than being alert. Here's how that false sense of security was broken again this week. ⚡ Threat of the Week Newly Patched Critical Microsoft WSUS Flaw Comes Under Attack — Microsoft released out-of-band security updates to patch a critical-severity Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) vulnerability that has since come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-59287 (CVSS score: 9.8), a remote code execution flaw in WSUS that was originally fixed by the tech giant as part of its Patch Tuesday update published last week. According to Eye Security and Huntress, the security flaw is being weaponized to drop a .N...

Here we have great news for all bug bounty hunters. Now you can get paid up to $40,000 for finding and responsibly reporting critical vulnerabilities in the websites and mobile applications owned by Facebook that could allow cyber attackers to take over user accounts. In the latest post published Tuesday on the Facebook page, the social networking giant announced that it has raised the monetary reward for account takeover vulnerabilities to encourage security researchers and bug bounty hunters in helping Facebook to fix high impact issues before nefarious hackers exploit them. The announcement says: Cybersecurity researchers who find security vulnerabilities in any products owned by Facebook , including Instagram , WhatsApp , and Oculus , that can lead to a full account takeover, including access tokens leakage or the ability to access users' valid sessions, will be rewarded an average bounty of: $40,000 reward—if user interaction is not required at all $25,000 reward—...

The highest followers account on Instagram owned by Selena Gomez has recently been hacked with unknown hackers posting a bunch of nude photographs of her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber on her account. The latest hack is not part of the ongoing Fappening events affecting a majority of celebrities by targeting their iCloud accounts, rather in the case of Selena, some hacker managed to breach her Instagram account and posted Bieber's photos. Bieber's three full-frontal shots of naked photos were visible to Selena's 125 million Instagram followers for a short duration of time, after which her account was swiftly taken down Monday night. A post from Selena's official Instagram account went up Monday showing 3 pics of Bieber with a caption that read: "LOOK AT THIS N***A LIL SHRIMPY." Selena's team has since re-secured her Instagram account, which was back online minutes after it was taken down, with the photos of Bieber deleted. The Bieber nude images...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious Go module that presents itself as a brute-force tool for SSH but actually contains functionality to discreetly exfiltrate credentials to its creator. "On the first successful login, the package sends the target IP address, username, and password to a hard-coded Telegram bot controlled by the threat actor," Socket researcher Kirill Boychenko said . The deceptive package, named "golang-random-ip-ssh-bruteforce," has been linked to a GitHub account called IllDieAnyway (G3TT), which is currently no longer accessible. However, it continues to be available on pkg.go[.]dev. It was published on June 24, 2022. The software supply chain security company said the Go module works by scanning random IPv4 addresses for exposed SSH services on TCP port 22, then attempting to brute-force the service using an embedded username-password list and exfiltrating the successful credentials to the attacker. A notable aspect of th...

Smart hackers could exploit a loophole that could allow them to steal a significant amount of cash from Google, Microsoft and Instagram using a Premium rate phone number. Security researcher Arne Swinnen from Belgium has discovered an ingenious way to steal money from big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Instagram using their two-factor authentication (2FA) voice-based token distribution systems. Swinnen argues that any attacker with malicious intent could create fake Google, Microsoft or Instagram accounts, as well as premium phone services, and then link them together. The attacker could then request 2FA voice-based tokens for all fake accounts using an automated scripts, placing legitimate phone calls to his service to earn him quite a nice profit. Swinnen created accounts on Google, Microsoft Office 365 and Instagram and then tied them to a premium phone number instead of a regular one. As a result, whenever one of these three services would call the account...

And the hacks just keep on coming. Timehop social media app has been hit by a major data breach on July 4th that compromised the personal data of its more than 21 million users. Timehop is a simple social media app that collects your old photos and posts from your iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare and acts as a digital time machine to help you find—what you were doing on this very day exactly a year ago. The company revealed on Sunday that unknown attacker(s) managed to break into its Cloud Computing Environment and access the data of entire 21 million users, including their names, email addresses, and approximately 4.7 million phone numbers attached to their accounts. "We learned of the breach while it was still in progress, and were able to interrupt it, but data was taken. Some data was breached," the company wrote in a security advisory posted on its website. Social Media OAuth2 Tokens Also Compromised Moreover, the attackers also got th...

Late last month Facebook announced its worst-ever security breach that allowed an unknown group of hackers to steal secret access tokens for millions of accounts by taking advantage of a flaw in the 'View As' feature. At the time of the initial disclosure, Facebook estimated that the number of users affected by the breach could have been around 50 million, though a new update published today by the social media giant downgraded this number to 30 million. Out of those 30 million accounts, hackers successfully accessed personal information from 29 million Facebook users, though the company assured that the miscreants apparently didn't manage to access any third-party app data . Here's How Facebook Classified the Stolen Data: Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen published a new blog post  Friday morning to share further details on the massive security breach, informing that the hackers stole data from those affected accounts, as follows: For about 1...