Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- It turns out that the Windows Snipping Tool is also vulnerable to a screenshot editing flaw.
- This error means that in some cases hackers can effectively undo your cropped screenshot.
- The news comes after it was revealed that partial screenshots on Pixel phones could be undone.
from Google Pixel phones are in the spotlight because of a so-called Acropalypse error. This flaw allowed hackers to undo and undo screenshots edited through the Markup tool. As it turns out, Google is not the only one with this error on its devices.
Software engineer Chris Blume reported on Twitter that the Windows 11 Snipping Tool is also vulnerable to a similar flaw, which allows hackers to extract image data snipped from a screenshot.
More specifically, this error crops up when people save a screenshot, use the snipping tool to crop it, and then save the resulting PNG file by overwriting the original PNG file (e.g. with the same name as the original file). However, saving the cropped file under a new name will not make the full screenshot accessible.
Like the original Acropalypse flaw for Pixel phones, this Windows vulnerability means that sensitive information (e.g. financial information, private images, chat messages) could still be accessible in an image if you thought you had cropped it out.
Are reported that this error also applies to Windows 10’s Snip and Sketch Tool, but not to the original Snipping Tool. Either way, you may want to make sure to save cropped screenshots under a new name for now if you use those tools. Otherwise, you can always press Windows+Shift+S to take a cropped screenshot from scratch. But we hope that Microsoft fixes this vulnerability soon anyway.