#YO_NO! Messaging app 'Yo' gets hit by hackers


Userlevel 7
By Shaun Nichols, 20 Jun 2014
 
Just days after the Yo app debuted to much fanfare (and head-scratching), the mono-message social tool has fallen prey to hackers.
A group of students from Georgia Tech University claim via TechCrunch to have accessed the application's entire user database, and gained the ability to obtain the phone number of anyone currently using the one-word messaging platform.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/06/20/yohacked.jpgYo! D'oh!
Additionally, the students said they had the ability to send any individual user or any group of users custom text messages via the service. They also say they can send push notifications and spoof Yo messages.
 
The Register/ full read here/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/20/yono_messaging_app_yo_get_hit_by_hackers/

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Userlevel 7
And now a look at it from the financial side? "I was like 'Yo Yo Yo, what you doin over there?'" :S


 
No surprise: Yo got hacked
By Ben Brody @CNNTech  June 20, 2014: 5:46 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Well, that was fast.

Someone figured out how to hack Yo, the ridiculously popular messaging app that lets users send the word "Yo" to contacts.

What did the hackers take advantage of? Pretty much everything the app has to offer: They can spam users with custom messages and even spoof other users.

Or they could. The app's developer, Or Arbel, said that particular vulnerability had been fixed since he learned about it at 1 a.m. He had it fixed by business hours.

Chintan Parikh, who hacked the app with two friends, told CNNMoney that the it took about an hour on Thursday night. http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/20/technology/security/yo-hacked/index.html »
Userlevel 7
The following is a update on YO hit by hackers.
Yo Hacked, Hires Hacker
By Jeff Goldman  |  Posted June 24, 2014
 
 
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/imagesvr_ce/9272/gears-abstract-feature-250x165.jpgThe ultra-simple "zero character communication" app Yo, which only allows users to send the word "Yo" to each other, was hacked last week by three Georgia Tech students -- and the company has responded by hiring one of them.
As one of the unidentified students explained to TechCrunch at the time, "We can get any Yo user’s phone number (I actually texted the founder, and he called me back.) We can spoof Yos from any users, and we can spam any user with as many Yos as we want. We could also send any Yo user a push notification with any text we want (though we decided not to do that.)”
In a blog post, company founder Or Arbel wrote, "Thursday night [i] received a text message from an unknown number, asking 'Is this the founder of Yo?' I responded Yes and immediately got blasted by Yos, followed by an alert that popped in my app saying YoBeenHacked."
 
eSecurity Planet/ full read here/ http://www.esecurityplanet.com/hackers/yo-hacked-hires-hacker.html

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