Hundreds of thousands of Snapchat photos are on the street – Update 3

By design or by hacking Snapsaved’s servers, which allow users to store photos from Snapchat, hundreds of thousands of users’ Snapchat photos may be on the street. It looks like it happened through an opendir.

Since the recipient was able to use Snapsaved, users do not know if their photos sent via Snapchat have been saved. Snapsaved saved the photos on a server. According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, hackers have taken full control of Snapsaved’s database.

Snapchat is a service that allows users to send messages that automatically disappear after a few seconds. Third-party services like Snapsaved allow users to save messages for later viewing. According to Dagbladet, the material also contains intimate photos, including of minors.

The hackers would try to link the photos to users on a private forum in order to create a searchable database. The hack would be discussed on 4Chan, reports Kenny Withers, but apart from a few photos, the hacker has not yet shown evidence that he does indeed have hundreds of thousands of photos. Snapchat tells TechCrunch that no servers of the company have been broken into.

Update 14:00: A link has been added with more information.

Update 2, 17.20: Snapchat comment added.

Update 3, Monday 12.30: According to Business Insider, it turned out not to be a hack of the Snapsave app. Speaking to Engadget, SnapSave denied having anything to do with the leaking of the photos through a spokesperson. A website called Snapsaved is alleged to have pretended to be a site associated with the Snapsave app for storing SnapChat images. This is how the site would have collected the images, including the associated usernames. It is still unclear whether the service intentionally leaked the images or whether there was a hack. The site is now offline.