That\u2019s some good news at least. In a blog post yesterday, Facebook\u2019s Guy Rosen went into further details about how the hack worked and what information was disclosed. Unfortunately, he revealed that 14 million accounts had been breached fully with…<\/b>
\nThat\u2019s some good news at least. In a blog post yesterday, Facebook\u2019s Guy Rosen went into further details about how the hack worked and what information was disclosed. Unfortunately, he revealed that 14 million accounts had been breached fully with names, contact details, usernames, gender, language, relationship status, religion, city, birthplace, age, friend lists, recent searches and more exposed in the attack. No passwords, however.
Private messages weren\u2019t stolen, except for messages a page admin received from their group. Contact details, birthplace and date of birth could possibly be used for financial theft, but the only use of the rest of the information is for public manipulation. It\u2019s possible that advertisers or political operatives would purchase such information and use it for targeted advertising. Facebook says that the attack has nothing to do with the US midterm elections \u2013 quite likely considering that many accounts were not American \u2013 but on request of the FBI, aren\u2019t revealing their suspects.
„We are sorry this happened. We know we will always face threats from people who want to access accounts and steal information.\u201d
Facebook VP of Product Management Guy Rosen in a conference call.
As Rosen explains, hackers used the \u201cView as\u201d feature to steal the access tokens from their friends, then \u201cused an automated technique to move from account to account, so they could steal the access tokens of those friends, and for friends of those friends, and so on, totaling about 400,000 people.\u201d
The friends list from each of those 400,000 accounts was accessed, and a small portion of those friends were also hacked. But due to the high numbers of friends the average account has, that small portion was 30 million people. Many questions remain unanswered: was the selection of those accounts random? What was the hackers\u2019 motive?
In the coming days Facebook will be sending out personalized messages to each of the accounts compromised, detailing the extent of the information stolen and advice on how to avoid any damage the data theft could cause. If you\u2019re unsure if your account was affected, you can check at their Help Center.
All Facebook accounts that were hacked had already been secured within two days of Facebook discovering the attack, and no third-party apps were accessed, but you may like to add another layer of authentication if you’re worried you reveal too much on your Facebook page.<\/p>\n

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