Snapchat Photos Stolen by 3rd Party App Using Hacked API

An anonymous reader writes: 13 GB of stolen Snapchat images were leaked Thursday night. Snapchat has since issued a statement indicating that the leaks were caused by an unauthorized third-party application that utilized a hacked version of Snapchat's API. Ars Technica identifies the culprit as SnapSaved, which was created to allow Snapchat users to access their sent and received images from a browser but which also secretly saved those images on a SnapSaved server hosted by HostGator. Security researcher Adam Caudill warned Snapchat about the vulnerability of their API back in 2012, and although the company has reworked their code multiple times as advised by other security researchers, Caudill concludes that the real culprit is the concept behind Snapchat itself. "Without controlling the endpoint devices themselves, Snapchat can’t ensure that its users’ photos will truly be deleted. And by offering that deletion as its central selling point, it’s lured users into a false sense of privacy."