Facebook data breach, 50 million accounts have been compromised
From the Jefferson County Journal staff reports
On Tuesday afternoon the Facebook engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts.
The investigation is still in its early stages, but Facebook is advising that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted, “View As”, which is a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed hackers to take over people’s accounts.
Facebook claims to have corrected the vulnerability and have reported the breach to law enforcement.
Facebook has also reset the access verification for the almost 50 million accounts that were affected. As a precautionary measure Facebook has reset the access verification for an additional 40 million accounts. This will result in around 90 million Facebook users having to log back into their accounts. Once logged in they will receive a notification explaining what has occurred.
The Facebook investigation is still in the initial phases. It has yet to be determined if the compromised accounts were misused or if any information was accessed. Facebook is not aware who is behind the attacks or where they were based.
