Hundreds of Instagram Users Say Their Accounts Have Been Compromised By What Appears To Be a Coordinated Attack (mashable.com)

A number of people have reported having their Instagram accounts hacked this month, Mashable reports, and many of these hacks appear to have taken the same approach. From a report: Users suddenly find themselves logged out of their accounts and when they try to log back in, they discover that their handle, profile image, contact info and bios have all been changed. Often the profile image has been changed to a Disney or Pixar character and the email address connected to the account is changed to one with a .ru Russian domain, according to Mashable. Some even had their two-factor authentication turned off by hackers. A handful of Instagram users reported the same details to Mashable as have hundreds of others who have taken to Twitter and Reddit to report hacks of their accounts.

Comments

Impressive

[Comboman]

Users suddenly find themselves logged out of their accounts and when they try to log back in, they discover that their handle, profile image, contact info and bios have all been changed.

Wow, I didn't think it was possible for a web hack to make changes to a machine's BIOS.

Re:ok ok, this is scarry.. I mean..

[Narcocide]

Yes, they're cheaping out on security at every level, from staffing to decision making. This is often reported on as "ageism" but it's not just about age. It's about malleability. The technology exists, but can't be deployed safely or maintained reasonably by the type of fresh-faced college grads who won't notice that their CEO is selling backdoor access to customer data on the black market.

Re:Newsworthy

[Aqualung812]

Wow -- "hundreds" of users out of a service that has 100's of millions? Is this really newsworthy?

When each of those hundreds has a few thousand followers, it becomes newsworthy. Even if I think Instagram needs to die.