Not us. (Photo: Naked Security)

Welcome to the big leagues, Snapchat! This week the photo-sharing app experienced a startup Bar Mitzvah, of sorts, when it was inundated with its first major spam attack.

Unsuspecting users received an explicit snap from someone calling herself named “Honey.Crush9,” inviting them to a sexy Skype conversation. Anyone foolish enough to take the bait ended up with—surprise, surprise!—malware. 

Naked Security reports that the spammers exploited a little-known loophole on Snapchat’s app that allows anyone to send you pictures—even if you haven’t added them to your authorized friends list. Here's how you fix it:

According to Snapchat's FAQ, you can change this setting. It tells users to tap the camera icon as if you are going to take a picture, then, tap the square button on the bottom right corner of the screen. Select "Settings", go to "Who can send me snaps...", and select "My Friends" instead of "Everyone."

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, fresh off bragging about the app’s explosive growth, apologized for the debacle on the company's blog. Acknowledging that spammers "totally suck," Mr. Spiegel wrote that the engineering team quickly halted the problem from spreading further by stopping new accounts from being created.

Poor Mr. Spiegel—guess a few nudes sneak onto his app, after all.

(Photo: Lawsuit)

Litigation is the newest symbol that your startup has made it, as we're sure Mark Zuckerberg can attest. Now that Snapchat, the "sexting" app that allows users to send photos that disappear after 10 seconds, is all grown up with a fresh $13.5  million raise, it has its very own lawsuit. Betabeat has obtained a copy (embedded below), and it's pretty juicy.

South Carolina-based Frank Reginald Brown IV attended Stanford with Snapchat cofounders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Brown came up with the idea for Snapchat, then approached Mr. Spiegel, who lived in the same dorm, about creating the app. Mr. Spiegel allegedly informed Mr. Brown that he had a "million dollar idea" on his hands, and the duo entered a verbal agreement to work on it together. They began looking for a coder, and came upon Mr. Murphy, a friend of Mr. Spiegel's. Mr. Brown became CMO, Mr. Murphy CTO and Mr. Spiegel CEO.

The trio began working on Snapchat, which the lawsuit says Mr. Brown named "Picaboo." The app actually received some press while it was called Picaboo, and Mr. Brown worked to build a social media presence for it while he served as CMO.

The lawsuit also contends that Mr. Brown designed the ghost logo, which Snapchat still uses, and helped with the UI. During the summer of 2011, they worked from Mr. Spiegel's father's home in Los Angeles.

A photo published with the lawsuit shows the trio smiling in front of a cake with the Snapchat ghost logo on it, which was allegedly taken while they were celebrating Mr. Murphy's birthday and the original launch of Picaboo in the iTunes store in 2011.

Then: the betrayal.

The suit alleges that in mid-August 2011, following a heated conversation about the future of Picaboo, Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy began to lock Mr. Brown out of access to the application, changing the passwords for various Picaboo accounts and refusing to return his calls. They froze him out of the business, and shortly thereafter changed the name of the application to Snapchat.

Snapchat provided TechCrunch with the following statement:

We are aware of the allegations, believe them to be utterly devoid of merit, and will vigorously defend ourselves against this frivolous suit. It would be inappropriate to comment further on this pending legal matter.

While the arguments made in the lawsuit are pretty convincing, it's hard to know who here is telling the truth--and if Mr. Brown is entitled to any sort of damages even if he is.

Sorry dude. Sounds like you may have been Winklevii'd.

Frank Reginald Brown vs. Snapchat by

(Photo: Digital Trends)

This is just your regularly scheduled friendly reminder that every free service you love will eventually by deluged with ads. Today, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel stopped by CNBC, an appearance that no doubt means many teens across America will soon be receiving a flurry of unwanted messages from their parents.

Guess what Mr. Spiegel is, like, totally psyched about these days? Advertising. Aren't you excited about advertising? Everybody loves advertising:

"There's a couple of things we are really excited about right now. There are a lot of businesses experimenting with SnapChat," Spiegel said. "What I'm really excited about is this really awesome new ad format we've been experimenting with. We think it's really engaging. We think when ads are done right, they can be informative and delightful and we are really excited about that."

Brands are already playing on the service, in fact: Last month, ubiquitous froyo franchise 16 Handles did a promotion where the company's Facebook fans were encouraged to Snapchat the company pictures of their purchases in order to receive a coupon. Hey, anything's worth trying when you're selling frozen yogurt in January.

What Mr. Siegel does not want you doing, however, is Snapchatting anything too sexy:

"SnapChat is not a great way to send inappropriate content because any photo that I send to you can be saved by taking a screenshot or by taking a photo with another camera. So it's not a great way to send inappropriate photos," he said.

"Funny, interesting embarrassing photos" only, kids. Keep it clean.

Intern Myles demonstrates the pink button of doom!

It seems like just 18 hours ago, we were begging some industrious app developer to get at us with a pitch for "the Snapchat for video," that would let you send snippets of film with a self-destruct button. From that clamoring pit of public demand arose Vidburn, a video sharing app built for fun by the folks at Lamplighter Games at a Hack Day. "We had so many laughs playing with it afterwards that we spent a week cleaning it up for primetime. It was just submitted to Apple today so it should be live in about a week," Lamplighter cofounder Kris Minkstein told us by email, offering to send a TestFlight.

But Vidburn may arrive at the App Store DOA because moments ago Snapchat just released an update that lets you send videos for 10 seconds or less. "We've been planning on today for a little while," cofounder Evan Spiegel told Betabeat by phone, shrugging off questions about the timing of the release.

"The photos are core," Mr. Spiegel said, but "it's definitely changed the way I use the app." For example, at an employee's birthday party at an arcade, he said, "There was this kid going crazy on Dance Dance Revolution. Like unreal! So with Snapchat for video, I grabbed my phone and sent to a friend. You can't really capture something like that, with the music and moving in a photo."

We can think of some other things the video feature could capture as well.

Mr. Spiegel said Snapchat stores videos on its server the same way it stores photos. "Everything passes through our servers on the way to your friend's phone. They basically live on our server until they're viewed and then they’re gone forever," he said. "I don't think our users have viewed this as a Mission Impossible send your spy kind of video," he said when we asked about screenshot-ing videos and security concerns from potential hacks. "Most people are sending funny faces," he added, reiterating the company line. (Remember, kids, practice safe sexting! And this is not it.)

The technical challenges of incorporating video were related to the implementation of the dual-purpose button and transmission of video, he said. "You tap to take a photo or press and hold for video. No one has done that before. It takes ten seconds just to get to your video camera. By the time you’ve done that, it’s kind of game over--the moment has passed by." Snapchat's button, he argued, eliminates the "weird experience around 'Is this moment a photo or video?' which is a weird way to think about your life."

Mr. Spiegel wouldn't comment on a recent report from Om Malik that Benchmark Capital was investing $8 million in his company at a $50 million valuation. He was also similarly mum over speculation that this latest update could lay the groundwork for monetizing the app, a long-standing plan because the founders didn't think they would be able to raise venture capital.