Recently, a lot of Instagram users have discovered that their accounts have been logged out. When the users tried to log in, they found that their accounts have been tampered with. Besides, when they tried to request a password reset, they only saw their email addresses linked to their accounts have been changed to “.ru” domains. Moreover, it is said that hundreds of user accounts were suspected of encountering Russian hacking invasion, not only reset password invalidation, but also the situation that the 2FA (two-factor authentication) is closed.

The email account that has been tampered with has the word “.ru”, which is from Russia. There have been many cases of Russian hackers invading sns accounts.In order to influence the 2016 US presidential election, Russian hackers used to spread fake news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter during the election. Russian hackers have also invaded Instagram for children, and now this wave of suspected Russian hackers has invaded Instagram accounts and is more sensitive.

Even though the Instagram’s spokesperson did not respond to the attack immediately, but the company tweeted an official acknowledgement of the issue on 15 August.

“We are aware that some people are having difficulty accessing their Instagram accounts,” the company tweeted. “If you think you have been impacted, please follow our guidance to regain access.”

However, one Instagram user, Kerry M, complained on Twitter that she was still unable to restore her account.

“@instagram My account has been hacked! Username, email and password has been changed. Now someone called Laitus Maria has all my pics.”

So far, no photos of any account have been added or deleted, but the motivation behind the attack is still unknown.
It is difficult to users to retrieve their accounts since if hackers tamper with users’ account emails, it is almost equal to losing control of their accounts.

Reminder
We would like to recommend our users that do not use weak password when creating a sns account. Also, users should backup their sns data, photos and videos at any time. Fortunately, 360 Total Security has provided “Document Protector” tool to help our users to automatically backup their documents before they are tampered with.