The newest Instagram exploit is the goofiest I've seen

The takeover flow, in two steps

On 30 May a wave of Instagram accounts, including high-profile ones such as the Obama White House account, appeared to have been compromised. Sid, a security researcher who writes at 0xsid.com and says he has spent close to a decade and a half finding vulnerabilities at unicorn scale, calls this the most unserious exploit he has seen. The attacker's starting point is only the victim's username, which is public. They then connect through a VPN or proxy near the target's city so that Instagram's security algorithms see a plausible region, and tell Meta's support AI that the account has been hacked. The AI is then asked to send verification codes to an email address the attacker controls — and it does.

There is no check that the address was ever associated with the account, according to the write-up. The attacker passes the code straight back to complete verification, and the platform issues a fresh password reset link. "Really, that's it," Sid writes. "The first proper zero auth password reset I've seen in production." Instagram's AI may or may not ask for a video selfie; he says it is not particularly discerning, and that an AI-animated photo taken from the target's own public feed has been widely reported to work.

Two-factor authentication does not help

Because the system treats this high-privilege recovery flow as a total account reset performed by the "true" owner, existing 2FA is bypassed rather than challenged. Sessions are revoked and the password is changed with no email, text message or push notification to the real owner. Recovery is then closed off, since the email address and phone number on the account now point at the attacker. There is no human to escalate to: the owner is left arguing with a chat interface and hoping the attacker does not repeat it. Accounts in the A/B test group where the AI support option is active cannot even switch it off.

A black market in handles

Multiple black-market Telegram groups appeared offering "account takeover" services at steep prices and short turnaround times. Short handles are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, so the demand is not surprising. Accounts were flipped — the handle "hey" among them — or repurposed for propaganda, as happened with obamawhitehouse and with ocmssf, the account of the Chief Master Sergeant of the U.S. Space Force.

Patched, after weeks or months

The Telegram groups have gone quiet and Meta appears to have patched the method. Sid notes that it seems to have worked for weeks, if not months, before that. His summary is that a company valued at $1.5 trillion lacked robust guard rails, and that its support AI would change the linked email on any account if asked nicely enough — a prospect he calls terrifying, if it were not so funny.