Snapchat Says It's Assessing Security Breach

LOS ANGELES (AP/CBSLA.com) — Snapchat, the disappearing-message service popular with young people, has been quiet following a security breach that allowed hackers to collect the usernames and phone numbers of millions of its users.

Snapchat said Thursday that it is assessing the situation, but did not have further comment. KCAL9's Cristy Fajardo was turned away at the company's Venice headquarters.

On Wednesday, the company's CEO Evan Spiegel tweeted "working with law enforcement. Will update when we can."

Earlier this week, hackers reportedly published 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers on a website called snapchatdb.info, which has since been suspended. The breach came less than a week after security experts alerted Snapchat of a vulnerability and warned that such an attack could take place.

In response to the warning, Snapchat said in a blog post last Friday that it had implemented "various safeguards" over the past year that would make it more difficult to steal large sets of phone numbers. But the measures appear to have fallen short.

The hackers claim they did it to teach the company a lesson and raise public awareness.

Any Snapchat user who wants to see if their account was affected was urged to visit the Gibson Security website, which allows users to compare a username against the exposed database.

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