Natalie Claus is alerted one day by her acquaintances that they have found nude photos of her. The incident happened to a college student, who is enrolled at a state university in New York, when a hacker tricked her into sharing a code to gain access to her Snapchat account.
The hacker gained access to a private section of the app, called ‘My Eyes Only’, which contained nudes that he clicked for himself as she was recovering from a rape.
The intruder spread those photos to Klaus’s contacts with a message: “Flash me back if we’re besties”.
Those messages were met with various reactions. Most were confused when Klaus played a bad joke. But one of her ex-boyfriends yelled at her and threatened her using messages from a group she wanted to join.
However, the hacker did not ask for anything from Klaus.
Klaus told the news agency bloomberg That he contacted Snapchat and the company responded by saying that they removed the hacker from Klaus’s profile within 24 hours of learning about the breach, a claim he does not agree with.
Kloss also contacted Genesio University Police and asked for their help. He said bloomberg That it was a harrowing experience because the police, throughout the discussion, made it appear that Klaus was responsible for the incident that tarnished his reputation.
During this ordeal, Klaus was contemplating hurting himself and even committing suicide, until his friend Katie Yates stepped in.
Yates, a victim of abuse himself, asked if Klaus wanted to take the matter into his own hands and find out the person who hacked his account.
Klaus agreed almost immediately, he said bloombergWhen Yates presented the action plan.
Yates contacted Kloss’s account himself, saying he had nude pictures to share. He and Klaus created a URL that was made to look like a porn site.
However, the URL collected the IP address of anyone who clicked on it through a website called Grabify IP Logger. The hacker made a critical mistake by clicking on the link, not using a VPN to the advantage of Yates and Claus.
The hacker was not redirected to a porn website but a Wikipedia page for the word “gotcha”. Yates immediately blocked the hacker but the necessary action was taken: the hacker was in Manhattan and was using an iPhone without a VPN.
Genesio police officers looked into it after initially failing to address the issue. They redirected him to New York state law enforcement where a detective had liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Chef David Mondor, 29, who lives in Harlem, was found to be a hacker. When caught by law enforcement officers, Mondor said he gained unauthorized access to at least 300 Snapchat accounts. He pleaded guilty to charges related to hacking and fraud with intent to commit and was sentenced to six months in prison.
Mondor and Klaus did not know each other.
The case also shows that tech companies are slow to respond when users report that their online security has been compromised. Snapchat is known to be vulnerable to such ‘sextortion’ attacks.
According to Snap Inc., a bloomberg The report is the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed by a 16-year-old teenager who alleged that the company did nothing to stop the sexual abuse of minors.
The FBI, which praised Yates and Claus, says it received 18,000 sextortion-related complaints in 2021. The FBI further stated that the victims paid the attackers $13.6 million that year. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told bloomberg It received 44,000 reports of online seduction in 2021, up from 17,000 in the category that includes sextortion.
(with inputs from Bloomberg)
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