Jamie Sanchez, a security researcher discovered a vulnerability within Snapchat mobile app which can crash your iphone by Denial of Service attack. The vulnerability can enable a hacker to launch DoS attacks which can potentially crash a users phone or requires that the user perform a hard reset.
Its also said that Snapchat disabled the security researchers snapchat account showing a sign of unprofessional ism.
Jamie declined to contact Snapchat with his findings because he believes the company has no respect for security research community after ignoring previous app vulnerability reports. He performed a demo to LA Times reporter, bombarded his handset with 1000’s of of messages within 5 seconds froze his phone till he reset his phone.
He also demonstrated this at the Shmoocon conference Washington DC mod of last month.
Android app is also susceptible to this attack but it doesn’t crash the Android phone.
He demonstrates this in his website as follows:
As we can see from the report published by Gibson, the first request is made by calling the function / ph / upload :
{ username : "youraccount" , timestamp : 1373207221 , req_token : create_token ( auth_token , 1373207221 ) media_id : "YOURACCOUNT~9c0b0193-de58-4b8d-9a09-60039648ba7f" , type : 0 , data : ENCRYPTED_SNAP_DATA }
{ username : "youraccount" , timestamp : 1373207221 , req_token : create_token ( auth_token , 1373207221 ), media_id : "YOURACCOUNT~9c0b0193-de58-4b8d-9a09-60039648ba7f" , recipient : "teamsnapchat,someguy" , time : 5 , zipped : "0" }
{ username : "youraccount" , timestamp : 1373207221 , req_token : create_token ( auth_token , 1373207221 ), media_id : "YOURACCOUNT~9c0b0193-de58-4b8d-9a09-60039648ba7f" type : 0 , data : ENCRYPTED_SNAP_DATA , zipped : "0" , recipient : "teamsnapchat,someguy" , time : 5 }