Facebook Was Hacked, Information Of 50 Million Users Exposed

Facebook yet does not know who is behind these attacks or where they’re based. The social media giant says that they have suspended the "View As" feature while it reviews it.

AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB

NEW DELHI: Facebook on Friday disclosed a major security issue which affected around 50 million of its accounts and their information. The company through a blog post revealed that its engineering team found that attackers identified a weakness in Facebook's code. Facebook states that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As”, a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts. Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they don’t need to re-enter their password every time they use the app. Facebook yet does not know who is behind these attacks or where they’re based. They have also not determined whether these accounts were misused or any information accessed. The social media giant now says that they have suspended the "View As" feature while it reviews its security. Mark Zuckerberg also addressed the issue in a Facebook post on his account saying they are now taking precautionary measures for those who might have been affected. He also wrote that as an additional precautionary measure, they are also logging out everyone who used the View As feature since the vulnerability was introduced. This will require another 40 million people or more to log back into their accounts. Here is the full statement provided by VP of Product Management Guy Rosen On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 25, our engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security. Our investigation is still in its early stages. But it’s clear that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As”, a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts. Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they don’t need to re-enter their password every time they use the app. Here is the action we have already taken. First, we’ve fixed the vulnerability and informed law enforcement. Second, we have reset the access tokens of the almost 50 million accounts we know were affected to protect their security. We’re also taking the precautionary step of resetting access tokens for another 40 million accounts that have been subject to a “View As” look-up in the last year. As a result, around 90 million people will now have to log back in to Facebook, or any of their apps that use Facebook Login. After they have logged back in, people will get a notification at the top of their News Feed explaining what happened. Third, we’re temporarily turning off the “View As” feature while we conduct a thorough security review. This attack exploited the complex interaction of multiple issues in our code. It stemmed from a change we made to our video uploading feature in July 2017, which impacted “View As.” The attackers not only needed to find this vulnerability and use it to get an access token, they then had to pivot from that account to others to steal more tokens. Since we’ve only just started our investigation, we have yet to determine whether these accounts were misused or any information accessed. We also don’t know who’s behind these attacks or where they’re based. We’re working hard to better understand these details — and we will update this post when we have more information, or if the facts change. In addition, if we find more affected accounts, we will immediately reset their access tokens. People’s privacy and security is incredibly important, and we’re sorry this happened. It’s why we’ve taken immediate action to secure these accounts and let users know what happened. There’s no need for anyone to change their passwords. But people who are having trouble logging back into Facebook — for example because they’ve forgotten their password — should visit our Help Center. And if anyone wants to take the precautionary action of logging out of Facebook, they should visit the “Security and Login” section in settings. It lists the places people are logged into Facebook with a one-click option to log out of them all. The latest announcement is a new addition for the company as it is already struggling with issues like security breaches and misinformation. (More details awaited)