Hacker reveals massive data leak in social networking app Parler after US Capitol siege
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The conservative social network Parler was forced offline Monday, tracking websites showed after Amazon warned the company would lose access to its servers for its failure to properly police violent content
A hacker from Austria has revealed a massive data leak in Parler LLC, a social media platform favoured by many supporters of US President Donald Trump.
I am now crawling URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequentially from latest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files coming up, 50k chunks, there will be 1.1M URLs total: https://t.co/YUl8CtoeEA
— crash override (@donk_enby) January 10, 2021
This may include things from deleted/private posts.
These are the original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded to Parler with all associated metadata.
— crash override (@donk_enby) January 10, 2021
Similarly, a Reddit user called 'BlueMountainDace' exposed how Parler's hosting platform Twilio, accidentally revealed the app's security authentications in a press release. This made it very easy for anybody to access Parler's private content including chat history, geodata and even driver's license.
Remember how people were dunking on Parler for being built on WordPress? Well, through a plug-in exploit, literally all the user data (including photos of verified state id cards) has been retrieved by hackers and is being posted online. Lmao ♾️https://t.co/w1yexoUOxq pic.twitter.com/h2Mf7Fn1Sc
— Classic Bird Respecter (@BirdRespecter) January 11, 2021
As per technology expert Matthew Sheffield, the breach was possible due the Parler's long criticised lax security standards.
This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data. https://t.co/YbjbwXQitj
— Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) January 11, 2021
The conservative social network Parler was forced offline Monday, tracking websites showed after Amazon warned the company would lose access to its servers for its failure to properly police violent content.
The site's popularity soared in recent weeks, becoming the number one download from Apple's App Store after the much larger Twitter banned US President Donald Trump from its platform for his role in inciting a riot at the US Capitol last week.
Messages of support for Wednesday's attack in Washington DC, along with calls for more demonstrations, had flourished on the platform, leading Google to remove it from its app store on Friday, followed by Apple on Saturday.
Amazon then confirmed it would suspend the platform from its cloud hosting services for allowing "threats of violence."
Parler Chief Executive John Matze lashed out at Amazon, Google and Apple, saying it was a coordinated effort knowing Parler's options would be limited and it would inflict the most damage right as Trump was banned from other social media platforms.
"There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch," he said in a post on Parler.
"This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place... You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don't count us out."
In addition to Parler, right-leaning social media users in the United States have flocked to messaging app Telegram and hands-off social site Gab, citing the more aggressive policing of political comments on mainstream platforms such as Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc.
The social network, launched in 2018, operates much like Twitter, with profiles to follow and "parleys" instead of tweets.
In its early days, the platform attracted a crowd of ultra-conservative and even extreme-right users. But it now attracts many more traditional Republican voices.
The platform drew fierce criticism in 2018 when investigators found that the shooter who killed 11 people in an attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue had earlier posted anti-Semitic messages on the site.