Are Instagram hackers actually bots to artificially increase followers?

[caincha]

I always wondered why is it that some users have thousands of followers with so little content and apart from a quick search I never gave too much thought about it. That was till today when I woke up and my account had a different picture and apparently I was following ~650 different accounts I never seen before.

At first I just changed my picture back (I was half-asleep…) but once it changed back to the other one I realised what was going on and changed my password then made it my mission to block every single one of those, a 6 step process if you don’t click anywhere by mistake (times ~650!) that is still ongoing.

 

Anyway after a while I noticed a couple patterns:

1. The vast majority are Indians followed by Russians and South Americans so I assumed it is related to population and poverty. Barely any Chinese but then again it is not an open government;
2. Most of them had under 100 posts (more than a few had under 10 posts) and thousands upon thousands of followers which I assumed were most likely hacked as well.

 

 

Then I remembered seeing quite a few possibly fake users posting on YouTube about hacking Instagram AND remembered a few people I know that mentioned their accounts being hacked recently which makes me wonder:

Are those actual hackers or, most likely, just bots?

My password was not exactly great (it is now ) so brute force would possibly be the method used but regardless of who/what they are does this mean Instagram security just went to the toilet…?

 

 

PS: yeah, yeah, get rid of social media and blahblahblah…  Sure but what about people who live overseas or people who make honest money out of it or people who use it for distraction? Plus blaming the victim is never a good idea, right?  

[bmx6454]

my guess would be a click farm, or something similar. it is usually faster/easier to hack an existing account, then to make tons of throw away's that all look fake.

[Spotty]

50 minutes ago, caincha said:

At first I just changed my picture back (I was half-asleep…) but once it changed back to the other one I realised what was going on and changed my password then made it my mission to block every single one of those, a 6 step process if you don’t click anywhere by mistake (times ~650!) that is still ongoing.

Just delete the account, start over.

 

53 minutes ago, caincha said:

My password was not exactly great (it is now ) so brute force would possibly be the method used but regardless of who/what they are does this mean Instagram security just went to the toilet…?

Most likely used the same email and password on another website which was hacked and the list of emails and passwords was sold. The "hackers" would just go through the list trying every users email and password on other websites such as Instagram.

[caincha]

It is a new account and it would be easier to delete and start over. I thought I'd 'make a point' blocking and deleting them all but I filed a report and about 1h later I got a message saying my account was blocked due to misuse so I am considering the alternative…

 

And what led me to believe it was a bot is the fact that I did not used the email in any suspicious site (or any new site whatsoever) recently. Coincidentally I did ran it over https://haveibeenpwned.com about a week ago and there was nothing…

 

Plus they did not post anything and did not change anything other than the main picture and adding people which I assumed to be easily done with a bot once brute force was used to get access. That and the fact that it was over 600 new 'follows' which was hard enough to try to undo so I am assuming it cannot be easy to do it by hand…? 

 

Also I did use the term 'hacker' in a loose definition but now that it was brought up what would it be the right term here?

[caincha]

Double-checked, no apps or websites linked to my account.

Downloaded the content, found out it was hacked in April 26th! 

Is there a way to use this info to locate them…? At this stage I am more curious than frustrated - more frustrated that there is no help from Instagram actually ¬¬

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

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