instagramlogoA security researcher found a flaw in Instagram's website that caused thousands of users' email addresses and phone numbers to be exposed online for several weeks, it was revealed on Thursday.

David Stier, a data scientist and business consultant, told CNET the website source code for some Instagram user profiles included the account holder's contact information whenever it loaded in a web browser.

Although the contact information was available in Instagram's mobile app if users chose to reveal it in their profile, it was never displayed on the desktop version of the Instagram website, so it's unclear why the details were exposed.

The leaked contacts are said to have come from thousands of accounts belonging to private individuals, including minors, as well businesses and brands. Stier alerted Instagram to the problem shortly after discovering it in February, and the photo-focused social platform issued a patch in March.

According to Stier, including the details in the source code could have let hackers scrape the data from the website relatively easily and use it to compile a database listing the contact information of thousands of Instagram users.

A similar data haul may have already occurred. On Monday it was revealed that a database containing contact information for millions of Instagram influencers, celebrities, and brand accounts had been leaked online.

The records included public data pulled from Instagram, such as profile picture, biography, and follower numbers, but also private contact information like phone numbers and email addresses.

The database was initially uploaded and shared by Mumbai-based social media marketing firm Chtrbox, a company that pays Instagram influencers to share sponsored content. Though uploaded by Chtrbox, the database included info from influencers who have never worked with the company.

In a statement, Chtrbox said the information in its database wasn't private and that it didn't source the information through unethical means.

Instagram parent company Facebook said on Monday that it was investigating the Chtrbox database. "We're also inquiring with Chtrbox to understand where this data came from and how it became publicly available," said Facebook.

A similar privacy befell the social media platform in August 2017, when a bug related to an Instagram API allowed hackers to breach multiple high-profile Instagram accounts belonging to celebrities.

Top Rated Comments

jsmith189 Avatar
50 months ago
Our weekly failure by Facebook.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
itsmilo Avatar
50 months ago
I don’t get why the EU isn’t doing anything about Facebook or Instagram. Usually they r up on everyone’s a$$. I guess lobbying is a hell of a thing
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sshambles Avatar
50 months ago
Instagram: We’re sorry. We’ll try harder to protect your privacy.

Everyone sane: *begins taking bets on how long until the next privacy issue is discovered*
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
windywalks Avatar
50 months ago
What the hell do they use as a security measure, a Trapper Keeper!?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
0815 Avatar
50 months ago
as usual not surprising ....

By now everyone should know that those big cooperations care more about ad revenue and sale of personal data then about protecting the privacy of their user base - there is just no money in protecting the privacy and apparently users still stick with them - so no harm done in their view point.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jtara Avatar
50 months ago
The article is a bit jumbled on details, so hard to understand exactly what is going on. By "web site source code", I assume they mean HTML. But could be buried in some Javascript or retrieved using Ajax and then inserted into the DOM. Probably in a hidden element, hidden input, in a data- attribute, etc.

I am not at all surprised, though.

I am one of a small handful of developers who still answer questions on the jQuery developer forums. jQuery is a popular but rapidly-fading Javascript library that was created primarily to "normalize" the differences between browsers so that devs don't have to code "if this browser, do this, if that browser do that...". Instead, jQuery provides it's own API and if you use their API then it deals with the differences between browser. Rapidly becoming a Thing That Is Not Needed.

Anyhoo, I am shocked at the low level of competency on the part of the (almost always overseas) frontend devs for major Fortune 500 companies. Like, for example, the web site for a major U.S. cell phone provider that I shall not name. You'll have to cycle through the alphabet to guess, but you won't have to go very far. ;)

So, first off, how do I know that they are working for major Fortune 500 companies? Because they've repeatedly failed to reduce their examples to the minimum needed to show the problem, and just post links to their development site - which is typically open to the Internet with no security. If somebody is willing to help them, they will have to dig through mountains of code - like 50 or more JS files being loaded, with redundant plugins left by the previous devs who were hired to do Just One Thing and then moved on to other jobs for other companies. They just keep adding layer after layer of crap. And another dozen tracking scripts, etc.

Anyway, there's their logo, and say an order form for for service, or for the latest iPhone or whatnot, and they've posted a link to their example page and usually it's accessible without a password, though sometimes it needs one, which of course they post openly in an open forum.

So, I COMMONLY see things like price calculators that are being relied-upon by the backend (they have inadvertently created their very own "name your own price tool"!), and it's not uncommon for the devs to not understand that Javascript running in a browser is NO MEASURE OF SECURITY. The only reason anyone should be doing any kind of price calculations or form validations in a web page is as a convenience to the user, to avoid a trip back and forth to the server. Where the validations MUST be done again, but often never are.

It is very common to see posted PHP, C# code, etc. often with no understanding on the part of the dev that we can't help them with that - it's a jQuery forum, not a forum for some random server language. And, at the same time, no understanding that, say, the PHP code runs on the server, and the Javascript code runs in the browser. Chalk that up to the awful historical design of PHP where you can (you don't HAVE to, and this style is discouraged today) mix server and browser code in the same file. It's not uncommon for these devs to just not get it that the server is treating their file as a template, and generates HTML on the server to send to the browser, and the generated HTML (generated by the PHP code) is sent rather than the PHP.

Since we often see PHP/C#/Cold Fusion/whatever code, that means we also see their (common) SQL injection vulnerabilities and other horrors of poor or no security in server code.

I can see the described leakage easily happening because a dev made a query that returned columns that should never have been included in the page and/or the dev somehow thought there's no issue with including some extra data that "the user will never see". You know, because it is "hidden". Hidden, yes, to the casual user, but not to anybody who knows how to use the web inspection/debugging tools present in every desktop browser. Or to a scraper/crawler, which is not limited to seeing just the "visible" elements on a page.

Somebody "might have made a copy". No, it is certain that somebody made a copy. There are certainly multiple copies of the data now in scrapers archives, and they probably do not even know what they have. A scraper is just a robot - it will scrape whatever it finds and squirrel it away. Probably later, an algorithm or a human will comb through it to see what might be "interesting".

Front-end development practices, as done by many top companies, is just absolute crap. The companies piece it out to the cheapest bidder, and there is often no continuity. It gets handed off from one developer to another and again and again and again, and each adds their own layer of crap and leaves their own footprints to the mess.

Beyond that, it is OBVIOUS that many of these devs are getting their information from 10-20 year-old books (which is why I now dispose of old development books rather than them them to a charity store), outdated blogs and tutorial sites, etc. Search engines and SEO have a surprising influence on this, BTW. Because sites that work their way to the top continue to stay there for many years after they have ceased to be useful. There are so many "frozen" dev tutorial sites that just have obsolete information but were once the top reference, and the search engines do a poor job of "expiring" their rankings.

I have to admit, I often Google for answers. But I CHECK THE EXPIRATION DATE. Usually I will include a data constraint in my searches and then check any dates in the blog or tutorial, etc. to insure I am getting fresh results, and not some 10-year-old advice. You don't know how many of these devs I have to point toward MDN, CSS-Tricks, jQuery Learning Center (on the VERY SAME SITE they are posting on...) and they had no clue that these sites existed and are the best references on the development they are doing.

What this researcher uncovered is just the tip of the iceberg. It is not an anomaly. It is endemic.

Edit: It's probably not fair to place the blame on front-end developers. Much of it can be blamed on the scourge known as "full-stack development". This is the fantasy that one person can do it all - front end, back end, database, security, etc. So, you have devs that know a little bit of that, a little bit of that, much of it outdated. As well as the fantasy that developers are fungible - you can just pass off bits and pieces of functionality to whatever random dev is available or can be hired the cheapest from an online virtual sweat-shop to implement a feature and you will somehow magically wind-up with something coherent.

And that, my friends is how sausage.... er, many of the highest profile websites - are too often made.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 16

iOS 16.4 for iPhone Nearing Launch With These 5 New Features

Monday March 20, 2023 11:50 am PDT by
Apple says iOS 16.4 is coming in the spring, which began this week. In his Sunday newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the update should be released "in the next three weeks or so," meaning a public release is likely in late March or early April. iOS 16.4 remains in beta testing and introduces a handful of new features and changes for the iPhone. Below, we have recapped five new features ...
apple park at night 1

Apple 'Tracking Employee Attendance' in Crackdown on Remote Working

Thursday March 23, 2023 3:41 am PDT by
Apple is tracking the attendance of its employees at offices using badge records in order to ensure they are coming in at least three times a week, according to Platformer's Zoë Schiffer. Since April 2022, Apple employees have been operating on a hybrid home/office work policy as part of a gradual return strategy following the pandemic, with staff required to work from the office at least...
iphone 14 pro max deep purple feature purple

iPhone 15 Pro Rumor Recap: 10 New Features and Changes to Expect

Thursday March 23, 2023 6:42 am PDT by
While the iPhone 15 series is still around six months away from launching, there have already been plenty of rumors about the devices. Many new features and changes have been rumored for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max in particular. Below, we have recapped 10 changes rumored for iPhone 15 Pro models that are not expected to be available on the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus:A1...
dynamic island

iPhone 15 Dynamic Island to Include New Integrated Proximity Sensor

Friday March 24, 2023 12:27 am PDT by
This year, all iPhone 15 models will include Apple's Dynamic Island that unifies the pill and hole cutouts at the top of the display, but there will also be a material change to the feature that wasn't included in the iPhone 14 Pro models. According to a new tweet by Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the proximity sensor on the iPhone 15 series will be integrated inside the Dynamic Island ...
maxresdefault

Nothing Launches $149 Ear (2) Wireless Earbuds to Compete With AirPods Pro 2

Wednesday March 22, 2023 9:48 am PDT by
Nothing today announced the launch of its second-generation wireless earbuds, the Nothing Ear (2), which offer many of the same features as Apple's AirPods Pro 2 at a lower price point. We went hands-on with the Ear (2) earbuds to see whether they're a viable alternative to the AirPods Pro 2 for those who want to save some cash. The Ear (2) earbuds are the successor to the Nothing Ear (1),...
voice isolation

iOS 16.4 Adds Voice Isolation for Cellular Phone Calls

Tuesday March 21, 2023 11:01 am PDT by
The iOS 16.4 update that is set to be released to the public in the near future includes voice isolation for cellular calls, according to notes that Apple shared today. Apple says that Voice Isolation will prioritize your voice and block out the ambient noise around you, making for clearer phone calls where you can better hear the person you're chatting with and vice versa. Voice...
TMobile Sprint

Apple Stops Allowing Sprint iPhone Activations, Removes Sprint References From Online Store

Thursday March 23, 2023 12:06 pm PDT by
Apple is no longer allowing customers who purchase an iPhone, cellular iPad, or Apple Watch to activate a device with now-defunct mobile carrier Sprint. Apple has also removed remaining references to Sprint from its online store. When checking out with a new purchase, Sprint is no longer an option for connectivity, a change that Apple appears to have implemented today. Prior to now, Sprint...
airpodsd 3 purple 4

iOS 16.4 Seemingly References New AirPods and AirPods Case

Tuesday March 21, 2023 11:43 am PDT by
The iOS 16.4 release candidate version that was provided to developers today appears to hint at a new set of AirPods that could be coming in the near future. According to @aaronp613, the beta features references to AirPods that have a model number of A3048 and an AirPods case with a model number of A2968. There have been no rumors that new AirPods are on the horizon, and it is early for...