Hackers Release 100,000 Nude Photos & Videos Intercepted From Snapchat

More than 100,000 videos and images sent using Snapchat have been leaked by hackers who have been intercepting and collecting the images for years. Earlier this week, an anonymous 4chan user claimed to have obtained images on Snapchat — the ephemeral messaging service that allows users to send pictures and videos that should disappear after a few seconds. The pictures were posted in an event dubbed ‘The Snappening,' Business Insider reported. Users have told the website that the collection includes a large cache of child pornography as half of Snapchat's users are teens between ages 13 and 17.

A third-party Snapchat client app has been collecting every photo and video file sent through the message site for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB private library. But Snapchat has denied that its service was ever compromised. 'We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks,' Snapchat told MailOnline.

'Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. 'We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.'

The warning was first spotted by blogger Kenny Withers, who described it as ‘one of the largest data breaches of online profiles.’ ‘To put this into perspective, just imagine the celebrity nude scandal,’ he wrote.

The news comes just weeks after hundreds of celebrity nude images were leaked online through 4chan, following a hack of Apple's iCloud in an event dubbed 'The Fappening.'