4.6 million Snapchat usernames and mobile numbers leaked

Snapchat is hitting adulthood with all the recent attacks on security and today the biggest leak has happened, with 4.7 million Snapchat usernames and mobile numbers leaked out into the wild, all from North America in the United States and Canada.

The hackers, under the website SnapchatDB, released a database full of usernames and mobile numbers, with the two last numbers censored to stop abuse and spam – the hosts have said they will send an uncensored version for free if they are messaged.

It does not seem to be a complete database of users in North America, it looks like the hackers were able to grab 76 of the 332 area codes available, plus an extra two from Canada. If anything, this shows the scale of Snapchat, if 4.6 million users account for only a third of the US Snapchat users.

This is not the first time Snapchat has had a mobile number breach, Gibson Security showed how they are able to grab 10,000 mobile numbers in seven minutes and released the API to try it out, exposing Snapchat’s big weakness.

Snapchat has yet to fail when it comes to photos, showing they take care on the service they provide. It is the back-end struggling, the mobile numbers and usernames attached to them seem to be the weakest link on Snapchat right now.

We can remember when Facebook and Twitter had the same security and privacy issues, in the stages where more teens were on the service and hackers were trying to find cracks in the well designed service, to take advantage of the millions of usernames and information.

Snapchat looks to be the next big thing when it comes to teenage usage, already we are seeing millions around the world flock to the photo sharing service and it only looks to get better, even with Snapchat declining a $4 billion offer from Facebook.