TikTok hacked by leveraging security vulnerability: Here’s what we know

TikTok hacked and user data has been compromised. According to reports, a potential hacker has stolen over data of over 2 billion users . The company sources revealed that the TikTok hacked security vulnerability has been fixed. The potential data breach issue was noticed by cyber security researchers, who argued that as many as 2 billion user database records have been compromised.

An insecure server was breached, which allowed access to TikTok’s user storage enabling the hacker to access crucial personal user data. The immediate remedial measure to adopt is to change the TikTok password and activate two-factor authentication. A private security research company revealed that they have reviewed a sample of the extracted data and an email has been sent to all their subscribers and private clients asking them to modify the credentials immediately.

Troy Hunt, a Microsoft Regional Director and Most Valuable Professional award holder for Developer Security added that he is unable to conclude whether TikTok data has been compromised or not. To those unaware, Troy runs haveibeenpwned, which is famous among technical evangelists. There is a possibility that TikTok could store all their internal backend source code on one Alibaba Cloud instance with a pretty weak password. According to TikTok, their security team has investigated the issue and found that the source code in question is completely unrelated to TikTok’s backend source code.

The interesting point to note is that Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team recently discovered a security vulnerability in the TikTok app for Android, which enabled hackers to take over private and short-form videos of users upon clicking a malicious link. Microsoft discovered a critical vulnerability in the TikTok Android application, which can cause data to compromise with just one single click. The user account could be hijacked without their consent upon just clicking a special link. As of this writing, TikTok has fixed the vulnerability issues and uploaded a fresh update on Google Play Store.