Angry Birds Website Defaced, Replaced By ‘Spying Birds’

It’s not exactly uncommon for mobile apps to collect data about their users and share it with advertising networks. These networks then then use the information to build user profiles for targeted advertising. That’s a risk of doing business in the modern world: when you share your information, it’s given to advertisers to target ads toward you.

But apparently when it comes to Angry Birds, that’s not all that’s going on. The New York Times recently reported that a secret 20-page report from 2012 contained code needed to extract the profiles generated when Android users play Rovio’s Angry Birds.

The report doesn’t make clear when and how the data collection occurs but clearly it was enough to anger some hackers, who defaced Rovio’s Angry Birds website with the NSA (America’s National Security Agency) logo, changing the image to ‘Spying Birds.’

The offending image was taken down in minutes, and was the result of a DNS (Domain Name System) attack, where the site’s name servers were switched with a second one that was under the hacker’s control.

A copy of the angrybirds.com defacement can be viewed on Zone-H, a website defacement archive.

Rovio has since released a statement denying their involvement in the extraction of data from their mobile apps.

“The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial websites and mobile applications across all industries,” the company said. “If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled websites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance. Rovio does not allow any third party network to use or hand over personal end-user data from Rovio’s apps.”

A better question: would terrorists really be playing Angry Birds? The NSA clearly seems to think so.

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Daniel Horowitz

Co-Founder, Deputy Editor

A veteran wordsmith of many years, Daniel doesn't just play and write about games, but he also writes his own comics. He can usually be found arguing with Dale about who the best member of the X-Men is (it's Jamie Madrox, obviously)

@horowitzcentral

#indie #writer.. Deputy Editor/Co-Founder @ContinuePlayMag, Graduate of Sarah Lawrence/Oxford, Former @Marvel intern.. Secret Mega Sloth, Closet Capt. America!

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