Timehop reveals July 4th data breach

Timehop, an app that resurfaces your social media posts from years’ past, revealed it suffered a data breach on July 4^th, giving the hacker access to data of 21 million users, including names, email addresses, and some phone numbers. According to Timehop, the hacker entered the app’s cloud computing account (which wasn’t protected by multifactor authentication then), transferred data, and then attacked its production database. Timehop noticed the breach two hours after it began and was able to put a stop to it. But not before the aforementioned number of users’ data have been stolen.

The company says private messages, social media content, financial data, and Timehop data were not affected by the breach. It’s possible the hacker saw the users’ Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts but there is no evidence this was the case. It looks like the access tokens to these social media posts weren’t used but Timehop logged out all users as a precaution and will require users to reauthorize the app. The company has also enabled multifactor authentication for its cloud-based accounts, increased its monitoring, and informed law enforcement.

The hacker started accessing Timehop’s data back in December 19^th using an admin’s credentials. They then created a new admin account from there and signed in twice in December, once in March, and another time in June to look at Timehop’s cloud data. The first attack happened on July 4^th.

Timehop assures users their private information hasn’t circulated online but they have employed a cyber threat intelligence company to track if the data appears on forums or lists on the internet and the dark web.

Source: The Verge