My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: How 200,000 Naked Teenagers got swiped in @Snapchat’s Snappening Thomas Crowne Affair

Saturday, October 11, 2014

How 200,000 Naked Teenagers got swiped in @Snapchat’s Snappening Thomas Crowne Affair

“We can confirm that Snapchat’s Servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party Apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party Apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.”

Snapchat's spokeswoman Mary Ritti in a Press Release responding to an apparent hack where some 200,000 explicit photographs of Teenagers (ages 13 to 17) have been exposed to the Public

There are hack and there are Data Breaches. But the Snappening is the new Fappening but instead of Hollywood Celebrities, it’s involves Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17) as revealed by blogger Kenny Withers in his article “The Snappening – 200,000 Snapchat accounts hacked”, published OCTOBER 9, 2014 BY KENNY WITHERS, Kenny Withers.


2014 needs to be called the year of Data Breaches, as we seem to have one almost every month.

The most recent being the Kmart hack involving of Credit card information over a month long period as stated in the article “Kmart becomes latest retailer hit by data theft”, published October 10, 2014 7:44 p.m. EDT by Anne D'Innocenzio, AP via USA Today and “Kmart Stores Hit by Data Breach”, published October 10, 2014 By MARIA ARMENTAL and SUZANNE KAPNER, The Wall Street Journal.

But when it’s your nudes or pictures of yourself in compromising positions, such as pretend lovemaking to a giant Teddy Bear, then we have a real crisis, right dear Reader? Well that the curious case of the Snapchat hack aka the Snappening, which curiously isn’t related to Snapchat  and in fact isn’t even a hack of Snapchat’s Servers as reported in the article “Nude 'Snapchat images' put online by hackers”, published 10 October 2014 Last updated at 16:25 GMT By Dave Lee, Technology reporter, BBC News.

So what is this Snappening anyway?

And is it any different from Snapchat Leaked, where perverted Teenagers (ages 13 to 17) screenshot Snapchat images sent to them of trusting females and submit them to the Facebook page for Snapchat Leaked as noted in my blog article entitled “Snapchat Leaked Facebook page shut down but Snapchat Leaked website still live - Snapchat's Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol is really Much Ado About Nothing”.

It is really the same thing……kinda! I’ll explain…..while snapping my fingers!

Snapchat’s Snappening – Curious nod to the Fappening where Celebrities, not Teenagers pics got swiped

First some definitions, chaps!

The Snappening got that name as a curious nod to the Apple iCloud hack where Hollywood Celebrities accounts were compromised, exposing their racy doppelganger online as explained in “Apple: Celeb photo attack was targeted, not widespread breach”, published September 2, 2014 12:27 PM PDT by Shara Tibken, CNET News.

That incident, called the Fappening, like this incident, wasn’t even a hack of Apple iCloud, as no passwords were stolen. Rather, a group called hackappcom used a script they developed to query iCloud via the “Find My iPhone” API.

This “Find My iPhone” API forces Apple iCloud to allow members of the hacker group hackappcom to answer their Secret questions using the public knowledge already known about many of these Hollywood Celebrities as explained in article “iCloud Data Breach: Hacking And Celebrity Photos”, published  9/02/2014 @ 3:00AM by Dave Lewis, Forbes.

Thus they gained access and downloaded their photos without actually breaching Apple iCloud Servers or even getting their passwords, as with that access, they could practically change their passwords as well, locking them out of the Hollywood Celebrities out of their own iCloud Accounts.

Apple has since beefed up their Security, particularly the Secret Questions listing, adding alerts to alert iCloud owners if anyone is accessing their accounts from unknown Computers as stated in “Apple to beef up iCloud security alerts after celeb photo hack”, published September 4, 2014 7:47 PM PDT by Steven Musil, CNET News.

Additionally, they’re also gone on the PR (Public Relations) defensive against any potential fallout by dropping prices on their already overpriced iCloud Storage Service as noted in my blog article entitled “US$19.99 1TB Cloud thanks to Apple iCloud Price Drop – Apple iCloud for Windows out to counter Bad Press from Celebrity Hacking”.

Thus the Snappening is the same M.O. (Modus Operandi), except it involves third party Apps, not an API hack via a computer as reported in the article “Sketchy Snapchat backup services leave users exposed”, published October 10, 2014 11:34 AM PDT by Seth Rosenblatt and Ian Sherr, CNET News.

Rogue Apps stealing Nudes – The Art of the Steal is to Catch a Thief in the Thomas Crowne Affair

That’s because their secure Servers, where the nudity swaps hands between members of this naughty Mobile Social Network, were never actually breached.

Instead, it appears that persons took a risk and instead of using the official Snapchat App, they used a third party website such as Snapsave and Snapsaved, a pair of popular Google Android Apps as reported in the article “Hackers Access At Least 100,000 Snapchat Photos And Prepare To Leak Them, Including Underage Nude Pictures”, published OCT. 10, 2014, 5:44 AM by JAMES COOK, Business Insider.

This based on the Thread on the site 4Chan where a Sunday October 12th 2014 date was being discussed for the release of the 200,000 photos as revealed by blogger Kenny Withers in his article “The Snappening – 200,000 Snapchat accounts hacked”, published OCTOBER 9, 2014 BY KENNY WITHERS, Kenny Withers. The thread is reproduced below.

Snapsave and Snapsaved websites offers the users of Snapchat the option to use Snapchat on the Web as a web client without having to download the official Snapchat App. These web clients, effectively posing as unofficial web Apps for Snapchat, were actually permanently saving these hapless Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17) bare naked nudes along with their usernames on their Websites’ Servers.

This is a little different from Facebook page for Snapchat Leaked where un-trustworthy nerds decided to screensave your Snapchat photos and submit them to that Facebook page for posting as noted in my blog article entitled “Snapchat now racks up 350 million shares of self-deleting snaps per day - Milennial Girl’s Litmus Test for Friends and future boyfriends”.

Here, Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17) had basically taken leave of their senses and instead of bothering with the hassle of simply downloading the Snapchat App, they simply used these supposedly safe Snapsave and Snapsaved Web App instead, probably because Snapsave and Snapsaved had similar names.

Thus this leads to one of two troubling conclusions; either the hackers simply raided their Snapsave and Snapsaved Servers or worse, the hack is an inside job i.e. the Admins running Snapsave and Snapsaved decided to play fast and loose with the Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17)  less-than-flattering posts of what lies beneath, offering them up for download online.

So this isn’t a hack of anything at all, just a bunch of Child Pornography Admins that love looking at nude Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17). This is more like The Art of the Steal is to Catch a Thief in the Thomas Crowne Affair.

Snapchat’s Responsibility – Child Pornography Private Parts as Teenagers need Social Media Training

Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17) need to relearn the below graphic once more, as it not every website that has the same name can be trusted with your Private Parts as is the case with Facebook as noted in my blog article entitled “FaceBook now gives Teenagers the power to make Public Posts - How making everything Public on Facebook improves their Advertising Revenue”.

Folks, this is Child Pornography, plain and simple!

Snapchat is still responsible though, as they need to do more to police the Google Play Store and Apple iTunes Store to point out and have these rogue Web Apps removed. And hopefully the perverts will give up staring at pubescent female and male bodies and delete the Child Pornography if they know what’s good for them!

So Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17), brace yourselves as Sunday October 12th 2014 is the date when it’ll all be revealed, so to speak……

In the meantime Teenagers (Ages 13 to 17), fortify yourselves with knowledge. Here’s the official Apps for Snapchat



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