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Tell HN: Meta's AI support feature allows Instagram accounts to be stolen

44 points by parable ↗ HN
If the AI support option is enabled for your Instagram account (it appears to be A/B tested for only a percentage of accounts), anyone can hijack it with little effort. Simply get on a proxy or VPN close to the account's region, then ask the agent to send a code to an arbitrary email address. Once you receive the code, pass it forward to the agent, and it'll provide you with a password reset link which you can then use to sign into the account.

Posting here for any Meta employees who may be reading. This flaw has been around for at least a few days and has been used to hijack over 100 high-value Instagram accounts. The correct patch would be to disable the AI support feature entirely for the time being until this is sorted and revert accounts and usernames that have been hijacked over the last few days. This is a pretty important flaw and it's currently being exploited in blackhat circles. The steps above are public knowledge in these circles and can be found trivially on Telegram.

Edit: I wouldn't be surprised if this was never acknowledged by Meta. Several months ago in February, there was an exploit that allowed anyone to view the email address and phone number on file for any Instagram account. No acknowledgement from Meta. IMO they should've filed an SEC 8-K for an issue like that. Also, this flaw was unpatched when I posted about it - not sure if it's since been patched.

8 comments

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LocalExt
I think AI for social channels are really unnecessary for users because of 80% hallucination. I know these AIs only useful for channels owners to track and learn user's habits and collect data...and data is money.
king_zee
When will people learn granting any kind of account access to an LLM is a moot point, if the LLM has knowledge of something, by design it can't help but divulge it
rolls
This happened to my account today. My sessions were revoked and password changed with no email, text, or push notification. Email and text codes weren’t being sent to my phone. I went through several cycles of resetting my password then getting hijacked again.
[dead] jmye
[flagged]
selfwealth
It may be irrelevant, but yesterday, I received the following email:

"Hi xxx,

The phone number +963xxxxxxx was added to your Instagram account at 18:11 (PDT) on Sunday, May 31 2026.

If you didn't add a phone number, you can secure your account here."

This is notably different from the standard message that I get when I change my phone number the normal way: "Someone tried to modify settings on your Instagram profile.

If this was you, use the following code to confirm your identity:"

Thankfully, I was able to recover it (still can't log in to threads for some reason), but people should be aware of an ongoing exploit that allows them to switch recovery methods without authentication.

fuglede_
> I wouldn't be surprised if this was never acknowledged by Meta.

It will, at least, have to be acknowledged by making GDPR Art. 33 notifications.