TikTok is the trending social network and the number of millions of users it has continues to grow. Now, some of them have been victims of a hack in which sensitive information has been stolen.
If you are a user of this social network, we tell you how to know if this TikTok hack affects you and what you can do about it.
TikTok has been hacked
It had been said for days that TikTok had been hacked, something that the company denied at all times. However, as days go by, traces of the stolen data are beginning to appear, proving that there has indeed been a leak.
It is a group of hackers called “AgainstTheWest” that has claimed responsibility for the computer attack in which they claim to have hacked both TikTok and the WeChat instant messaging tool. To add more credibility to their “confession”, they have even provided screenshots of the entire database they have stolen.
According to these hackers, they accessed an Alibaba server (the Aliexpress company) where the Chinese company ByteDance, owner of TikTok, stored the data of the fashionable social network.
According to the group of cybercriminals, they obtained more than 800 GB of user data, which would correspond to 2,000 million records of this database.
Among the stolen information are usernames and sensitive information such as passwords, platform statistics , software code, cookies, authentication tokens in case you have authenticated through OAuth, internal server information, etc.
Worse; Data on payments made on the platform has also been leaked , so your information on the payment method that you have linked to your TikTok account could be at risk.
As reported by AgainstTheWest, their motivations are not apparently criminal, but rather they attack targets that may be a threat to the West, such as China or Russia (although North Korea, Belarus or Iran are also on their list of possible targets).
How to protect yourself from data breach
If you are a TikTok user, follow a series of measures to protect yourself in the event that this data ends up in the wrong hands and could jeopardize your means of payment or contain sensitive information that could lead to credential theft on other platforms (although the norm of cybersecurity says that you should have different passwords at each site or service).
Security experts recommend that TikTok users change their passwords and make sure two-factor authentication (2FA) is turned on anyway, out of an abundance of caution.
In statements to Forbes , TikTok has once again denied this theft of information from its users:
“TikTok prioritizes the privacy and security of our users’ data. Our security team investigated these claims and found no evidence of a security breach.”