My other half discovered that some dodgy person/company had managed to send instagram messages advertising handbags to all of her followers from her account. She changed her password immediately, but what could have happened here? Is it the case that a “hacker” had access to her full instagram account, or would they have used some tool that allows posting of messages via some kind of proxy without requiring access to her actual account? There was no record of other logged in devices on the security page of her account.
Update: She’s just been through her junk email folder and found a “We’ve noticed a new login” email from instagram yesterday, so I presume that means they were fully in to the account then. How they got the password is anyone’s guess, but could be any of the suggestions below. Thanks all for the responses.
Most likely it was a password stuffing attack. If they used the same password on multiple sites, there is a good chance one of those other sites was compromised and the attackers took the compromised credentials and tried them on other sites like Instagram. It could have been something more advanced like a stolen cookie, but usually the simplest explanation is most likely.
Always use a different password for each service, enable MFA where possible, and use a password vault like Bitwarden.
yup, all mine are generated by bitwarden and look like this
^!i!MS11Ot4mTT
no reason to ever remember that. and with 2fa, good luck.
Huh, that’s a weird way to spell *******