How secure is the new Snapchat

Snapchat, the relatively new photo sharing app received a prestigious gift from the hackers on New Years, when 4.6 billion account details along with phone numbers were leaked online from Snapchat’s database. It was as shocking for the Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel as it was for most of the users whose credentials were leaked and their security was at stake.

Thereafter came a new update wherein users were not asked to fill in their phone numbers as a compulsory step while signing up for the app. Users could easily register with a username, email id and password. This worked out to be going good until Snapchat came up with another update. This update was to restrict any robots from making accounts or so it said on the signup page.

Users had to correctly select Snapchat’s ghost, the icon of the app.

Creating such a security system, the Snapchat authorities were sitting at ease, pleased with what they had done until, Steven Hickson, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech focused on computer vision and robotics, broadcasted on 22nd January how he could hack the security update within 30 minutes. In his blog Hickson claimed that he was able to write a program to identify the ghost images automatically. Hickson wrote, “With very little effort, my code was able to ‘find the ghost’ in the above example with 100% accuracy. I’m not saying it is perfect, far from it. I’m just saying that if it takes someone less than an hour to train a computer to break an example of your human verification system, you are doing something wrong.”

Now this proves to be another misstep that the new social media app has taken. At the moment a Snapchat spokesperson said, “We continue to make significant progress in our efforts to secure Snapchat. For security reasons, we cannot provide detailed information on security countermeasures.”

With such threats constantly hovering over the app, can the users feel totally safe about sharing their credentials on the website. What are your views? Share with us in the comments section below.

via SocialAppsHQ Blog http://ift.tt/KOAQ3D