Facebook responded to the report saying that its security was intact and that the hackers probably used malicious browser extensions to access the messages.
Facebook is in news again, and this time again for a not-so-good reason. A BBC report has revealed that a group of hackers have gained access to private messages of nearly 120 million Facebook accounts and messages from 81,000 accounts have already been posted by these perpetrators as a sample.
Most of the affected users were based in Ukraine and Russia but some were also from the UK, US, Brazil and elsewhere. « The hackers offered to sell access for 10 cents per account. However, their advert has since been taken offline, » the report added.
Facebook responded to the report saying that its security was intact and that the hackers probably used malicious browser extensions to access the messages. Also, the company had taken preventive steps to prevent other accounts from being hacked.
« We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores, » Guy Rose, Vice President of Product Management at Facebook, told BBC.
« We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts. » The breach as first discovered in September when a user going by the name FBSaler posted this on the social media: » We sell personal information of Facebook users. Our database includes 120 million accounts. »
The BBC Russian service contacted the five Russian users whose messages were uploaded by FBSaler and the post were theirs. The messages posted by the hackers included details like a photo from a private holiday, a chat about a concert and even an intimate conversation between two lovers.
Earlier in September, there was a report that over 50 million Facebook accounts were hacked. The list of compromised accounts included the names of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. The company later confirmed that additional 40 million accounts were also at the risk of hacking. The breach was due to a bug in the View As feature of the social media. The company saidit had fixed the bug.
