Viber hacked by Syrian Electronic Army
The support site for the popular chat application Viber appears to have been hacked today by the Syrian Electronic Army, with their support page defaced and an extract from their user database extracted. In a statement made on the defaced page, the SEA wrote:
"The Israeli-based “Viber” is spying and tracking you
We weren’t able to hack all Viber systems, but most of it is designed for spying and tracking"
SEA hackers also suggested Viber users to uninstall the application because company is spying and tracking each user, recording IP address of each user in database as shown above, "Warning: If you have "Viber" app installed we advise you to delete it" they tweeted.
Initially, it wasn’t clear how much information the SEA was able to snag, or what it planned to do with it. But in a statement Viber said the attackers didn’t get beyond their support servers and that no sensitive user data was exposed.
Update from Viber:
“Today the Viber Support site was defaced after a Viber employee unfortunately fell victim to an email phishing attack. The phishing attack allowed access to two minor systems: a customer support panel and a support administration system. Information from one of these systems was posted on the defaced page.
It is very important to emphasize that no sensitive user data was exposed and that Viber’s databases were not “hacked”. Sensitive, private user information is kept in a secure system that cannot be accessed through this type of attack and is not part of our support system.
We take this incident very seriously and we are working right now to return the support site to full service for our users. Additionally, we want to assure all of our users that we are reviewing all of our policies to make sure that no such incident is repeated in the future.”
