Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Viber’s Database, Warns the Users of the App's Spying Activities

By iDigitalTimes Staff Reporter

After attacking several brands in the last few days, the Syrian Electronic Army has now hacked the database of Viber application and accused the company of spying on its users.

The hacking group has claimed that the messaging application, which allows its users to make free calls across the globe and send pictures and text messages for free, has been tracking its users and also keeping a record of them.

"If you have 'Viber' app installed we advise you to delete it," SEA sent out awarning through Twitter on 23 July, and also took the responsibility of breaking into Viber's database and ruining the website.

 "All Viber Users, the Israeli-based 'Viber' is spying and tracking you," read a message on the support page of Viber.  The page has been pulled down and a "forbidden" message flashes in the site at present.

Viber has admitted that it was attacked by the hacking group and has promised to get the site up soon.

 "Today the Viber Support site was defaced after a Viber employee unfortunately fell victim to an email phishing attack," Viber told Tech Crunch. "The phishing attack allowed access to two minor systems: a customer support panel and a support administration system. Information from one of these systems was posted on the defaced page."

"The data is quite basic -- we want to know when user registered, where from (country), device type (helps us understand who uses Viber, detect problems, etc), UDID is an internal ID (not the Apple UDID), push token is used to communicate with users (but cannot be used by a 3rd party), etc., it added.

Viber also mentioned that even though the hackers didn't gain access to sensitive data such as message content and address book, the company was disappointed due to the attack. "We are working, as we speak, to make sure that this will not happen again," it said.  

Viber has over 200 million users and is compatible in around 193 countries.

The Syrian Electronic Army is a hacking group, which supports the Syrian President Bashar-al- Assad and it has been hacking a lot of websites.

Recently, the hacking group hacked the database of Truecaller, a global online phone directory, after which it targeted Tango.me.  It also attacked The Daily Dot, when the site refused to remove an article that carried a cartoonish picture of the Syrian President.

In May, it hacked the Twitter account of the parody news site The Onion and attacked the Associated Press, CBS, The Guardian and BBC.