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Instagram is growing quickly—and with the second most popular social media network in the world (behind just Facebook), the photo-sharing network absolutely dominates when it comes to user interactions. And with great success comes great responsibility—responsibility to keep users' accounts safe, responsibility to fight fake accounts and news, and responsibility of being transparent. You might know that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing network has recently been a victim of a widespread hacking campaign that has affected thousands of Instagram users, leaving them locked out of their accounts. In the wake of the security mishappening, Instagram has announced a trio of security updates intended to discourage trolls, stop misinformation, and make the platform a little safer for its one billion users. In an official blog post , titled "New Tools to Keep Instagram Safe," published by Instagram Co-Founder & CTO Mike Krieger on August 28, the company announced thr...

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...

Two days ago, we reported at The Hacker News about a critical issue in the most popular image and video sharing service, Instagram app for mobiles , that allows an attacker to hijack users’ account and successfully access private photos, delete victim's photos, edit comments and also post new images. Yesterday, a London developer Stevie Graham has released a tool called “ Instasheep ” a play on the 2010 Facebook stealer Firesheep , a Firefox extension that can be used to compromise online accounts in certain circumstances automatically using a click of mouse. Graham discovered the Instagram issue years ago and was shocked when he realized it hadn’t been fixed by Facebook yet. He released the tool after claiming Facebook refused to pay a bug bounty for his reported vulnerabilities affecting the Instagram iOS mobile application. Graham tweeted about the issue: “ Denied bug bounty. Next step is to write automated tool enabling mass hijacking of accounts, ” he wrote. “ ...

Instagram has been hit by a widespread hacking campaign that appears to stem from Russia and have affected hundreds of users over the past week, leaving them locked out of their accounts. A growing number of Instagram users are taking to social media, including Twitter and Reddit, to report a mysterious hack which involves locking them out of their account with their email addresses changed to .ru domains. According to victims, their account names, profile pictures, passwords, email addresses associated with their Instagram accounts, and even connected Facebook accounts are being changed in the attack. Many of the affected Instagram users are also complaining about their profile photos replaced with stills from popular films, including Despicable Me 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean. Although it is still unknown who is behind the widespread hack of Instagram accounts, the use of the email addresses originating from Russian email provider mail.ru may indicate a Russian hacker or...

' Nir Goldshlager ' known as Facebook hacker and founder of Break Security  , who reported many critical bugs in Facebook OAuth mechanism in past few months, today disclose a critical  vulnerability in Instagram Oauth that allow an attacker to hack any account. Succesful hack allows attacker to access private photos, ability to delete victim's photos and to edit comments and also the ability to post new photos. Hacker explained that there are two ways to hack Instagram accounts using OAuth, first via Hijack Instagram accounts using the Instagram OAuth or Hijack Instagram accounts using the Facebook OAuth Dialog. During his bug hunting Nir found loopholes in Instagram’s security parameters i.e redirect_uri , that allows  attacker to pass the access token to his own domain with mx as suffix i.e code straight to breaksec.com.mx . POC :  https://instagram.com/oauth/authorize/?client_id=33221863eec546659f2564dd71a8a38d&redirec...

Social media networks are no doubt a quick and powerful way to share information and ideas, but not everything shared on Facebook or Twitter is true. Misinformation, or "Fake News," has emerged as a primary issue for social media platforms, seeking to influence millions of people with wrong propaganda and falsehoods. In past years, we have seen how political parties and other groups have used spoofed social media profiles of influencers or leaders to spread misinformation, and most of the time such techniques work to successfully convince people into believing that the information is true. Although social media services like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, offers account verification (verified accounts with blue tick) for public figures, we have seen hackers hijacking verified accounts to spread fake news from legitimate account to their millions of followers. Now, researchers have uncovered a new, cunning attack technique currently being used by hackers to take ove...

Hijacking an online account is not a complicated procedure, not at least in 2016. Today, Instagram confirmed that the company is in the process to roll out two-factor authentication for its 400 Million users. It is impossible to make your online accounts hack-proof, but you can make them less vulnerable. Then what you can do to protect yourselves from hackers? Several companies provide more enhanced steps like Encrypted Channel Services, Security Questions, Strict Password Policy and so on. But, what would you do if a hacker had somehow managed to access your accounts’ passwords? Since the online accounts do not have an intelligent agent inbuilt to verify whether the person is the legit driver of the account; beyond a username and password match. Hence the concept of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) born out! Jumbos like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have already blended the 2FA feature with their services to tackle account hijacking. 2-F...

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...

Instagram has recently patched a security issue in its website that might have accidentally exposed some of its users' passwords in plain text. The company recently started notifying affected users of a security bug that resides in a newly offered feature called "Download Your Data" that allows users to download a copy of their data shared on the social media platform, including photos, comments, posts, and other information that they have shared on the platform. To prevent unauthorized users from getting their hands on your personal data, the feature asks you to reconfirm your password before downloading the data. However, according to Instagram, the plaintext passwords for some users who had used the Download Your Data feature were included in the URL and also stored on Facebook's servers due to a security bug that was discovered by the Instagram internal team. The company said the stored data has been deleted from the servers owned by Facebook, Instagra...

A 21-year-old New Jersey woman has been charged with hacking into the email accounts of pop star and actress Selena Gomez, stealing her personal photos, and then leaked them to the Internet. Susan Atrach of Ridgefield Park was charged Thursday with 11 felony counts—five counts of identity theft, five counts of accessing and using computer data to commit fraud or illegally obtain money, property or data, and one count of accessing computer data without permission. According to the prosecutors, Atrach allegedly hacked into email accounts belonging to Gomez and one of her associates several times between June 2015 and February 2016, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said in a press release . She then obtained images and other media stored there and shared them with her friends and posted them online. Gomez, who has more than 138 million followers on Instagram, was the victim of a hacking attack in August 2017, when photographs of her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieb...

Meta Platforms is said to have fired or disciplined over two dozen employees and contractors over the past year for allegedly compromising and taking over user accounts, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Some of these cases involved bribery, the publication said, citing sources and documents. Included among those fired were contractors who worked as security guards at the social media firm's facilities and were given access to an internal tool that allowed employees to help "users they know" gain access to accounts after forgetting their passwords, or had their accounts locked out. The system, called "Oops" and short for Online Operations, is off limits to a vast majority of the platform's users, leading to the rise of a "cottage industry of intermediaries" who charge users thousands of dollars and reach out to insiders who are willing to reset the accounts. "You really have to have someone on the inside who will actually do it...

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...

Iranian state-sponsored actors are continuing to engage in social engineering campaigns targeting researchers by impersonating a U.S. think tank. "Notably the targets in this instance were all women who are actively involved in political affairs and human rights in the Middle East region," Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU)  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity company attributed the activity to a hacking group it tracks as  Cobalt Illusion , and which is also known by the names APT35, Charming Kitten, ITG18, Phosphorus, TA453, and Yellow Garuda. The targeting of academics, activists, diplomats, journalists, politicians, and researchers by the threat actor  has been   well-documented   over  the  years . The group is suspected to be operating on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and has exhibited a pattern of using fake personas to establish contact with individuals who are of strategic ...

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...

If you believe that your organization is not at real risk of cyber attack, then you are absolutely wrong. Incidents of massive data breaches, advanced cyber attacks coming from China , groups like Syrian Electronic Army , Hacking Point of Sale machines at retailers such as Target have splashed across the news in the last one year. Whether a Government Agency or Private Company, Small or a Large Tech Company.... ...It’s no secret that No one is Immune to Cyber Attacks . This article is the first in a two-part series from The Hacker News , listing first four out of  Top 7 Brutal Cyber Attacks. And here we go... #1 "Hacking Team" Data Breach Hacking Team , the controversial spyware company, recently been hacked by some unidentified hackers that exposed over 400 gigabytes of its internal sensitive data on the Internet. Milan (Italy) based IT firm ‘Hacking Team’ sells intrusion and surveillance software solutions to Governments and Law Enforcement agen...