A critical security vulnerability with the Instagram app lets attackers take over the victim’s Instagram account and can change their phone as a spying tool.
All the attackers need is a malicious image, once the image file opened in the Instagram app it would give the hacker full access to the Instagram account.
Instagram is one of the popular social media platforms globally which has early 1 billion monthly active users and 100+ million photos uploaded every day.
Security researchers from Checkpoint found the vulnerability with the Instagram app 3rd party library Mozjpeg – an open-source project used by Instagram as its JPEG format image decoder for images uploaded to the service.
An attacker can exploit the vulnerability by sending a target victim via email, WhatsApp, or another media exchange platform.
Once the victim opens the Instagram on their phone the exploitation occurs it allows attackers “full access to any resource in the phone that is pre-allowed by Instagram.”
“At a basic level, this exploit can be used to crash a user’s Instagram app, effectively denying them access to the app until they delete it from their device and re-install it, causing inconvenience and possible loss of data,” reads Check Point blog post .
“A large heap overflow could occur in Instagram for Android when attempting to upload an image with specially crafted dimensions. This affects versions before 128.0.0.26.128,” reads the F acebook advisory .
Users are recommended to update with the recent version of the Instagram app to thwart the vulnerability.
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