YouTuber Alexis ‘Quackity’ Maldonado’s new translation app has already been hacked just hours after it first launched.
On July 7, Quackity unveiled his real-time translation tool, Dababel, designed to help streamers reach new audiences.
The announcement video, which featured Breaking Bad actor Luis Moncada hearing his son speak Spanish for the first time through the app, went viral on X, catching the attention of a good-natured hacker.
The hacker, Daniel Christensen, also known as BobTShoplifter, claimed that the app had some security flaws and urged Quackity to DM him. When his warnings were ignored, he decided to go full Mr Robot on Dababel.
Ethical hacker breaches Quackity’s translation app hours after launch
Shortly after his warnings went without a response, BobTShoplifter showed some of the security flaws he found by taking over the app.
On Dababel’s “plans” sections, a new “hacked by bob” subscription emerged, along with another titled “BobTShoplifter on X tryin’ to report several security issues.”
The hacker elaborated on why did what he did, explaining: “Every time I use a new service, I check their security, too. If I’m gonna be using something I want to make sure it’s secure.”
“Security testing your app is important! I just do it for free, so they are safer,” he added.
A screenshot showing Christensen’s original tweet and the hacked plans soon went viral, no doubt finally getting the folks at Dababel and Quackity’s attention.
Christensen noted that subscription info wasn’t exposed through this issue, further revealing that he had hoped Dababel would let him continue testing to be sure it was fully secure and would share more info once he was sure everything was safe.
Amazon gets the green light to sell the Nintendo Switch 2