ACCORDING to Malwarebytes, 27-year-old Kyle Svara of Oswego, Illinois admitted to hacking women’s Snapchat accounts across the US, harvesting account security codes from 571 victims between May 2020 and February 2021 and gaining unauthorized access to at least 59 accounts. Rather than breaking Snapchat’s encryption, he targeted owners through social engineering, gathering phone numbers and email addresses and triggering the legitimate login process which sent six‑digit security codes to victims’ devices.
Posing as Snapchat support, he sent more than 4,500 anonymous messages via a VoIP texting service, claiming the codes were needed to verify or secure the account. He focused on Snapchat’s My Eyes Only feature to persuade victims to share both codes, bypassing two security layers and obtaining private material, including nude images. Svara marketed himself as a hacker-for-hire on platforms like Reddit, and sold access to accounts to others, which led to his downfall; sentencing for him is scheduled for May 18.