MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Viber, the London-based free messaging and calling service, was recently attacked, with some of its systems temporarily compromised as a result.

According to TechCrunch, The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for the attack on Viber. They also defaced the support page of Viber, posting data they gathered from the attack. The defaced support page has since been taken down, though the support center remains unavailable as of posting time.

A successful phishing attempt on a Viber employee was reportedly the cause of this.

Viber and Kayako, the ones who made Viber’s customer helpdesk software, responded by affirming that only two minor systems – a customer support panel and a support administration system – were affected.

Part of the Viber statement reads:

The phishing attack allowed access to two minor systems: a customer support panel and a support administration system. Information from one of these systems was posted on the defaced page.

It is very important to emphasize that no sensitive user data was exposed and that Viber’s databases were not “hacked.” Sensitive, private user information is kept in a secure system that cannot be accessed through this type of attack and is not part of our support system.

On 9to5Mac, Kayako reiterated Viber’s statement:

The security of our customers’ helpdesks and data is our highest priority. As Viber said in their statement, this looks to be an isolated compromise of an individual’s account. Even so, we have taken the precautionary measure of auditing our systems. At this time we have no reason to believe that any other Kayako system or customer has been affected and we will continue to monitor the situation.

In a follow-up statement, Viber said the data gathered was the location and date of registering, the device type, an internally-used Unique Device Identifier (UDID) and a push token used to communicate with users. Viber says the push token can’t be used by a third party.

The information gathered by the attackers was used by Viber’s support team to help users. Providing some basic data to a support team is common practice among app developers. – Rappler.com