{"id":32862,"date":"2018-08-17T13:54:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T05:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=32862"},"modified":"2019-10-16T22:20:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T14:20:56","slug":"instagram-says-hacking-incident-under-investigation-offers-security-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2018\/08\/17\/instagram-says-hacking-incident-under-investigation-offers-security-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Instagram says hacking incident under investigation, offers security tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Multiple Instagram users have been locked out of their accounts and claimed to be unable to re-establish their access.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to the victims, once criminals have hijacked an account, they are changing the account&#8217;s nickname, profile picture, email, and phone number making it almost impossible to restore access.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are aware that some people are having difficulty accessing their Instagram accounts,\u201d said the company. \u201cAs we investigate this issue, we wanted to share the below guidance to help keep your account secure.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you received an email from us notifying you of a change in your email address, and you did not initiate this change \u2013 please click the link marked \u2018revert this change\u2019 in the email, and then change your password.<\/li>\n<li>We advise you pick a <a href=\"https:\/\/help.instagram.com\/369001149843369\">strong password<\/a>. Use a combination of at least six numbers, letters and punctuation marks (like ! and &amp;). It should be different from other passwords you use elsewhere on the internet.<\/li>\n<li>You can also use the steps outlined on <a href=\"https:\/\/help.instagram.com\/368191326593075\">this page<\/a> to restore your account. Please use a new, secure email address to restore your account.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, <a href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/accounts\/manage_access\">revoke access<\/a> to any suspicious third-party apps and turn on <a href=\"http:\/\/help.instagram.com\/566810106808145?helpref=faq_content\">two-factor authentication<\/a> for additional security. Our current two-factor authentication allows people to secure their account via text, and we\u2019re working on additional two-factor functionality with more to share soon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The vulnerability that hackers are looking for<\/b><\/p>\n<p>In a commentary released to the press, Nadezhda Demidova, security researcher at Kaspersky Lab said that \u201cso far, there is no valid data on exactly how criminals are gaining access to people&#8217;s Instagram profiles, but the most common method for this sort of attack is via phishing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, at the end of July, a couple of weeks before the hacking wave, Kaspersky Lab witnessed a spike in this attack vector: on 31 July, the number of phishing attacks skyrocketed from around 150 per day to almost 600.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn many instances, Instagram users themselves are the vulnerability that hackers are looking for: they give out their credentials by entering them into phishing websites, uncertified apps, and replicas of authentic pages.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDue to its popularity, Instagram has always attracted a high amount of fraud &#8212; the number of people using the platform is now more than a billion. Once a criminal has hacked into a user&#8217;s account, they can access that user&#8217;s personal data and their correspondence. And the user&#8217;s profile can be turned into a source of malicious content, phishing, and spam,&#8221; says Demidova.<\/p>\n<p>To stay safe, users are advised to take the following steps:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do not click on suspicious links<\/li>\n<li>Check the address of the page where you plan to enter your personal information<\/li>\n<li>Use only the official social networking app installed from a trusted source, as well as those offering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.simplygram.com\/\">free Instagram followers<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Do not share your account login information with third-party apps<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Multiple Instagram users have been locked out of their accounts and claimed to be unable to re-establish their access.\u00a0 According to the victims, once criminals have hijacked an account, they are changing the account&#8217;s nickname, profile picture, email, and phone number making it almost impossible to restore access.\u00a0 \u201cWe are aware that some people are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":32864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19],"tags":[6151,3213,117,508],"class_list":["post-32862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apps","category-headlines","tag-high-tech","tag-instagram","tag-kaspersky-lab","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}