The million dollar mobile app Yo was hacked by three Georgia Tech students who confirmed gaining access to users' phone numbers and being able to send push notifications.
Just as the single-purpose messaging app Yo was gaining popularity in the tech world, reports of the app being hacked surfaced online.
A Georgia Tech student along with his two roommates sent an email to TechCrunch claiming that they were successfully able to hack Yo and gain access to users' phone numbers. In addition, the students were also able to "spoof Yo's from any users."
The popularity of the app attracted some big investors who willingly raised $1 million earlier this week. But the financial backing did not stop the hackers from gaining unauthorized access to the app's data base.
"We can get any Yo user's phone number (I actually texted the founder, and he called me back.) We can spoof Yos from any users, and we can spam any user with as many Yos as we want. We could also send any Yo user a push notification with any text we want (though we decided not to do that.)," the hackers' email reads.
Or Arbel, the creator of the Yo app, also confirmed that the app had been compromised and they were working to resolve the matter, Mashable reports. Arbel also spoke to the people responsible for the hack, who helped him resolve the matter. But the company is working with Parse to apply some finishing touches, the report adds.
Yo officially confirmed the hack in a tweet sent Friday that said the company was working on some "security issues." But the details of the hack were not revealed by the company.
We are working on the securities issues that came to our attention. We want you to know we take this very seriously.
- Yo (@YoAppStatus) June 20, 2014
Yo was launched in April, but it rose to popularity just this week after The Financial Times reported that it raised $1 million in funding. Arbel worked on the idea he got from Mobli CEO, and it took him just eight hours to build the initial version of the app.
According to a report from USA Today, Yo was attacked before as shown in an Instagram post. The post reads "wow. many 1337. such bad security. I hacked Yo. Use #YoBeenHacked to talk about it."
The app creators will possible roll out an update to fix the security issues that were highlighted in the last few hours. The app is available for Android and iOS users for free.
