Instagram said Wednesday that hackers recently breached their system and surreptitiously obtained celebrities’ personal information, including email addresses and phone numbers, according to The Verge.
The social media platform, which Facebook purchased for $1 billion in 2012, did not identify the particular users that were affected. But Instagram’s concession comes two days after reports that cyber criminals infiltrated Selena Gomez’s account and published nude photos of Justin Bieber, her ex-boyfriend. The company has since informed all of the verified account holders that their personal information could have been acquired and exposed. Passwords were allegedly not compromised.
“We recently discovered that one or more individuals obtained unlawful access to a number of high-profile Instagram users’ contact information — specifically email address and phone number — by exploiting a bug in an Instagram API. No account passwords were exposed,” the company said in a statement, according to The Verge. “We fixed the bug swiftly and are running a thorough investigation.”
While it is not clear if the incident involving Gomez — who has the most Instagram followers in the world — was related to the breach Instagram announced, it seems very likely.
Celebrities, and public figures in general, seem to be a natural target for nefarious hackers. A collection of personal photos, many of which contained nudity, were leaked in August 2014, after someone infiltrated Apple’s iCloud platform. The hacker obtained private images of celebrities like actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, with her boyfriend, baseball phenom Justin Verlander. Due to the vast amount of people impacted, the status of those affected, and the sexual content involved, many referred to the hack as “Celebgate” or “The Fappening.”
Two people, in separate cases, were arrested, tried, and convicted for infiltrating various celebrities personal iCloud accounts through phishing schemes. Though many believe that the two cyber criminals were respectively connected to the “The Fappening,” no victims were enumerated in their cases. They were also not convicted for spreading the images, only illegally accessing other peoples’ personal accounts.
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