Hackers exploited an Instagram flaw access celebrity profile data

An Instagram flaw allowed hackers to access profile information for high-profile users, the incident was confirmed by the company.

Instagram has recently suffered a possibly serious data breach with hackers gaining access to the phone numbers and email addresses for many “high-profile” users.

Hackers recently accessed personal information of “high-profile” users, including phone numbers and email addresses.

The stolen data could be used by hackers to target victims with social engineering attack aimed to access their accounts and leak their video and photos.

The data breach affected a number of Instagram service, Facebook-owned company has notified all of its verified users the hack.

An unknown hacker has exploited a bug in the application and accessed some of their profile data.

The vulnerability affects the Instagram application programming interface (API) that is used to interact with other apps.

The company did not provide details about the flaw exploited by the hacker, the company has promptly patched it and started an investigation into the incident.

“We recently discovered that one or more individuals obtained unlawful access to a number of high-profile Instagram users’ contact information—specifically email address and phone number—by exploiting a bug in an Instagram API,” reads a statement issued by Instagram.

“No account passwords were exposed. We fixed the bug swiftly and are running a thorough investigation.”

The company did not reveal the name of the high-profile users that have been affected by the data breach. Experts speculate that the recent hack of Selena Gomez’s Instagram account was linked to the flaw exploited by the hacker, the company did comment the hack.

The company notified all verified users of the hack via an email and also warned of possible phishing and social engineering attacks via email, phone calls, and text messages.

Let me suggest to enable two-factor verification on your accounts, start adopting strong passwords, don’t share same credentials on different accounts, be vigilant on suspicious and unsolicited emails.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Selena Gomez, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.