A number of people have recently been the victims of a hack, one that’s affected hundreds of users across Instagram. Users are reporting being locked out of their accounts, after hackers gained access and changed the email addresses to ones with Russian domain names.
First spotted by Mashable, the hacking spree is apparent by the hundreds of users complaining about the incident on Twitter. What’s strange though is that in none of the accounts have hackers deleted images or posted anything new, offensive or otherwise. All that’s happened is that the passwords and phone numbers have been changed, with email addresses changed to ones with .ru domain, which is used in Russia. In many cases the display pictures were also changed, oddly enough, to Disney or Pixar characters, with the bio information deleted.
Normally, the easiest way to regain access to an account is through the linked email address, which makes this hack a problem for a lot of people. It’s still unclear who is behind the attack, or even if this is one group or more. Most of the hacked accounts didn’t have two-factor-authentication set up, though some did. Likely the added security helped some but wasn’t completely impregnable.
Instagram says it’s aware of a hack, and is shutting down access to each of them as they spot them and starting a remediation process. In the meantime though, all the victims can really do is wait, despite it having been a few days already. But for the rest of you with un-hacked accounts, it’s probably wise to enable two-factor authentication, and make sure you stay away from third-party app downloads.