11 Oct 2014
Hackers claim they will leak up to 200,000 Snapchat photos in an online database on Sunday night. But what is the ‘Snappening’, how did it happen – and will it actually take place?
On Thursday, some users of the website 4chan.org claimed to have access to hundreds of thousands of Snapchat photos. The hackers are threatening to release the photos on Sunday in a searchable database tied to Snapchat usernames.
The hackers said they had been intercepting photos sent via a third-party Snapchat app for years. The hack, which is being called the Snappening, comes just weeks after hundreds of naked celebrity photos were leaked on the 4chan website after an iCloud leak.
Doesn’t Snapchat delete photos as soon as they are sent?
Not quite. Snapchat says photos are deleted from their servers after they’ve been opened by recipients. Any photos still unopened after 30 days will also be deleted from the servers.
On your phone it’s slightly different. Richard Hickman, a forensic researcher, discovered that Snapchat hides the photos on android devices so that the operating system and apps ignore them. But the photos can still be accessed by some third party apps that don’t obey Android rules. Mr Hickman says the images are recoverable and do not disappear forever.
One third party app, Snapsave, could be the source of the leak. When sending a photo on Snapchat, the recipient can take a screenshot of the image but the app immediately lets the sender know. Snapsave claimed to be able to save photos and videos without letting the sender know. These saved images could then be stored in the cloud, although Snapsave developer Georgie Casey denies the app had anything to do with it.
SnapSaved.com, a website which has now disappeared, is suggested by some 4chan users as another possible source of the leak.
Snapchat themselves admitted back in May that “it’s sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted. So… you know… keep that in mind before putting any state secrets in your selfies.”
What are in the photos the hackers are threatening to leak?
All of the photos are personal ones that users would have expected to be deleted shortly after them being taken. They could be of anything, but 4chan users have suggested that many of the photos are likely to be explicit.
Are any of the photos of underage children?
Roughly half of Snapchat’s user base are aged between 13 and 17, so if the hackers do release hundreds of thousands of photos there’s a good chance many of them could be of children.
What does the law say about this?
It’s quite straightforward. In the UK it’s against the law to take, possess, show, distribute or advertise indecent images of children. If you download any leak of Snapchat photos that happens to have pictures of underage children in it, you’ll be committing a criminal offence.
Why are the hackers doing this?
The hackers haven’t made any demands or asked for any ransom. Niko Calogiros, editor of the website Sick Chirpse, told Channel 4 News: “They’re just doing it because they can. They’re just trying to show you the power of being anonymous on the internet.
“They got away with it last month (with the naked celebrity leak) and they’ll get away with it again.”
Is it a hoax?
One 4chan user, calling himself ‘John’, claimed he was behind the release of photos. He released a statement on Saturday saying he’d decided not to release the photos. “The content that has been released over the last 48 hours is an invasion of personal privacy”, he said. “I do not condone this action or any like it.”
Many posters on 4chan and Reddit believe the hackers claims are a hoax. In reality we won’t know until any photos are actually released online.
Are my photos at risk?
There’s no way of knowing. Even if you’ve never used a third party app yourself, if you’ve sent photos to someone else who has been using one, your photos could have been hacked in to. The safest way to keep your photos safe in future is to follow Snapchat’s advice to not put any “state secrets in your selfies.”
Channel 4 News asked snapchat users what they thought about the Snappening. Joe Gilfillan, 20, told Channel 4 News: “I think it’s incredibly immoral. Snapchat’s appeal is the so called ‘destruction’ of the images after a short period, thus tempting people to maybe act in a way they wouldn’t necessarily do, for example sharing personal pictures with a loved one.”
