Yo, Yo Messaging App Has Been Hacked, Yo
Yo been hacked! The free iOS and Android messaging app created to literally say only, "Yo," has some serious security issues, which several people appear to have exploited in the past few days and Yo founder Or Arbel acknowledged earlier today (June 20).
Three students at the Georgia Institute of Technology say they can access any Yo user's phone number, apparently by username. They can also spoof Yos, or send Yos on behalf of any user to any other user. They can also spam endless Yos to any user.
Imagine your phone shouting "Yo" over and over again without stopping. It's easy to see how a harmless-seeming app could turn into a nightmare.
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The Georgia Tech students also found a way to make Yo say more than just Yo — sort of. They can also access the app's "push notifications," or updates sent to a user's phone about an app, and write any text into those notifications.
"I actually texted the founder, and he called me back," one of the Georgia Tech students told tech news site TechCrunch in an email.
Why is this a big deal? After all, the app literally just sends "Yo" noises. But would you believe that Tesla and Space X innovator Elon Musk is on Yo?
If so, don't believe it — a Yo user and tech entrepreneur named Shubham Datta simply grabbed the Yo username "Elonmusk" to see what would happen, then searched "justyo.co" over Twitter to find other Yo users (Yousers?). Suddenly, people were tweeting about exchanging "Yos" with Elon Musk.
Datta came clean on a Medium post about what had happened. This may not technically be a hack, but it appears to be a sort of loophole in the way Yo identifies its users.
The Georgia Tech students aren't the only ones who've found ways to mess with Yo. A Vine user called Hako posted a video today of what appears to be a hacked Yo app playing, instead of its customary "Yo!" noise, a few seconds of music from the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.
It's not clear, however, if Hako actually hacked Yo or is playing a prank. "Never Gonna Give You Up" is often used as the punchline of a prank or joke in online communities; being tricked into listening to the song is called being "rickrolled."
In yet another alleged Yo hack, Instagram user Stephzibi posted what appears to be a screenshot of Yo on an iPhone, with an alert that reads "wow. many 1337. such bad security. I hacked Yo. Use #YoBeenHacked to talk about it."
Yo has already called in a security team to help address these and other issues, and plans to have them fixed "in the next few hours," Arbel told TechCrunch.
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