Got warning “Unusual Instagram login attempt from Samsung sm-g935ft”? Nobody is hacking your Instagram

Recently many social media users were concerned about an alleged hacking campaign affecting Instagram, after reports of login attempts made from “Samsung sm-g935F” appeared. Finally, the specialists report that there is nothing to fear, since this has only to do with some technical procedures on this platform and the permissions requested by some additional apps.

There are several apps to add additional features to Instagram, such as new filters, monitoring the number of followers, loop videos, image editing and downloading files from the app.

To function properly, these apps require access to some permissions on the user’s Instagram account, specified by specialists. However, these apps do not explicitly request such permissions and do not have Permission from Instagram. 

So how do these apps access Instagram user account data? To get started, they must “identify themselves” to the platform, a procedure known as “handshake”. It is during this process that the problem that this article focuses on originates.

“Samsung SM-G935F” is a specific model of Samsung Galaxy 7. The name of this device was used in the code of a program designed by a user and stored in a software repository for public use. To avoid creating code from scratch, developers use resources stored in various repositories, adding their own code and modifying some elements of the original. This code was used by the developers of many of these tools for Instagram.

Anyone who has recently used these apps will see a new login to their Instagram account under the name “Samsung SM-G935F”.

This is not really a security issue, so changing the password for your Instagram account (or any other platform that uses third-party apps) has no effect in this case. However, users should not forget that changing periodic password is one of the most recommended cybersecurity practices.

In the event of a genuine hacking attempt, users would be notified by Instagram, so they should not ignore any security alerts issued by the platform. Keeping your application always up-to-date is also a recommended security measure.