Instagram's Data Breach Now Turned a Nightmare!

Want to give a call to your favourite Pop star or send an email to your favourite footballer? You can get their contact details for as low as $10

Last Wednesday, Facebook-owned Instagram confessed that some hackers were able to exploit a bug in their API and obtain Emails and Phone number of some ‘high-profile’ accounts. Guess what, it’s for sale now!

This seems to be the same bug that led to the compromise of Selena Gomez’s account, which was used to post nudes of her ex-boyfriend and pop star Justin Bieber.

A hacker group by the name - ‘Doxgram’, has claimed responsibility for the hack and now it is offering details from the stolen accounts for mere $10 per lookup in the underground Internet.

The claim extends to have details of POTUS, Jennifer Lopez, Taylor Swift and Cristiano Ronaldo, among 6 million other accounts that are being offered for sale. Doxgram group has been spotted on a Bitcoin forum advertising about its database.

The leak further includes emails and phone numbers of other normal users too, which were affected by the bug in the photo sharing social network.

Ankush Johar, director at HumanFirewall.io, a leading provider of human information security awareness and preparedness solutions, said: “As expected, it’s not only the celebs whose data has been compromised, it’s the gen-pop too. It’s highly probable that after this per-request-sale, hackers will try to sell the entire data dump altogether. Once leaked, the data can easily be used by other hackers for phishing and smishing campaigns at mass. Simple tip: Think before you click on any link in your email/SMS!

“Your email and your phone number, both can be used to reset and hijack your account. It’s extremely important now to make sure that these are safe. Avoid opening emails from untrusted sources and pay close attention to what permissions you are allowing an application on your smartphone. Use multi-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security to your account. Stay cautious, Stay safe!”