January 2012
Grindr hacked, leaving many compromised
Gay dating app Grindr was hacked over the weekend. An update for the program will be released in a few days.
Popular gay dating app Grindr was hacked over the weekend, leaving the information of hundreds of thousands of members compromised. This internet security breach was acknowledged by CEO Joel Simkhai, who said an update for the program will be released in a few days.
According to sources, the hacker spoofed many accounts in Sydney, Australia, using them to send messages and change profile pictures to explicit pictures without the account owner's knowledge.
"We [do] get people trying to hack into our servers," Simkhai told the Syndey Morning Herald. "That's something that I am aware of, and we certainly have a team in place that are working to prevent that."
The hacker seems to have cracked the token used to communicate between smartphones on the app and found this was a way to access the program's user database. The app has more than 3 million gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender users. Information from Blendr, the straight version of the app, which is far less popular, was also compromised, sources say.
Users should always be careful when using programs with personal information, but companies must have strong internet security to keep instances like this down.
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