Hackers leak 200,000 personal Snapchat photos following threats

PanARMENIAN.Net - Up to 200,000 explicit photos obtained from Snapchat users have been published online.

Hackers got into Snapchat's system using a third party app, and the images have now been circulated, Digital Spy reports citing The Guardian.

Users on the 4Chan forum, where numerous celebrity leaks have been posted, claimed that they got into Snapchat's system using third-party app Snapsave, which enables Snapchat users to screenshot the images they receive in order to keep pictures which would otherwise expire.

The hackers had threatened to publish the images on Saturday (October 11), saying that they had saved users' login details from the third party app and stored images over a number of years.

"We can confirm that Snapchat's servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks," the company said in a statement issued over the weekend.

"Snapchatters were victimised by their use of third party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we explicitly prohibit in our terms of use precisely because they compromise our users' security."

It is suspected that those behind the circulation of explicit Snapchat images are also responsible for the leaks of nude photos taken by hundreds of celebrities, including Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence.

Lawrence recently described the leaking of intimate and personal photographs as "a sex crime", and said that anyone seeking out such images online "should cower with shame".

More recent celebrity victims of nude photo leaks have included Doctor Who actor Matt Smith and former girlfriend Daisy Lowe.

In January, a Snapchat hack saw around 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers leaked online due to a security loophole in the popular messaging service.