Two days back, Facebook, the most popular social network has been attacked by a security breach that made company to a severe loss.
Through a telephone conference, the president and co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. He explained that last Tuesday, September 25, a team of company engineers found an attack and that the investigation is still in its “initial phase“. From the official news, it was declared that almost 50 million Facebook accounts have been hacked by an anonymous people.
They Used “See As” Mode
In Facebook’s opinion, hackers exploited a “vulnerability” in the platform code that affected “See as“mode. An ability that allows users to see their profile as if they were other people.
This allowed them to seize information, which could have been used by third parties, to connect to the accounts of affected Internet users. Although the company still does not know if that is something that hackers came to do.
“Although we believe that we have already remedied the vulnerability. As a precaution, we have temporarily disabled the option ‘See as’. While we carry out the investigation to make sure it does not contain any other problem. ” Zuckerberg explained.
In addition, according to the Californian company, hackers also tried to access personal information of the user profile. Like the name, sex, and municipality of residence. But at the moment Facebook has no confirmation of whether they managed to collect this data.
“We are taking the matter extremely seriously. And we wanted to warn everyone about what happened and the immediate actions we have taken to protect the safety of people, “said the Facebook co-founder.
Among the measures taken by the company to respond to the attack. We proceeded to the immediate disconnection of all those affected accounts that had activated the option to connect to Facebook without the need to enter the username and password.
Activate Security Measures
From the company, they reported that 40 million additional accounts were also disconnected in this way as a “precautionary measure“. So if a user must re-enter their username and password to access Facebook. This does not necessarily mean that he is one of the victims of the attack.
The company based in Menlo Park (California, USA) said it remains in contact with security forces, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to help identify hackers.
Memorize of Cambridge Analytica
This attack occurs after Zuckerberg took office in April before the US Senate. The responsibility for the massive filtration of data to the company Cambridge Analytica, and ensure that safety is a priority of the company.
The co-founder of the social network admitted then that “it was a big mistake” to allow Cambridge Analytica to access the data of up to 87 million users. To favor the electoral campaign of the current US president, Donald Trump.
Facebook practically monopolizes, together with Google, the income from advertising on the internet. and it is long, the most used social network in the world, with 2,000 million monthly users.
In addition, the company owns the popular instant messaging application WhatsApp. And the one that allows sharing images by mobile, Instagram, very used among the youngest.
After this theft of data, Facebook 12,600 million dollars in the stock market, said the same social network.