Grindr Hacked In Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

A popular “meat-market” smartphone app that spawned a sexual revolution in Australia’s gay community has been compromised by a Sydney hacker, potentially exposing intimate personal chats, explicit photos and private information of users. The location-aware Grindr app enables gay men to meet other gay men who may be just metres away, making use of their smartphone’s Global Positioning System (GPS). It had about 100,000 Australian users as of August last year and more than one million users worldwide. Now a hacker has pushed the app developer into a security crisis that has left its users seriously vulnerable considering the vast amounts of private information traded through the app – in many cases naked photos. The hacker discovered a way to log in as another user, impersonate that user, chat and send photos on their behalf.

Grindr has acknowledged the problem and says they “have a team in place” working on it.