Facebook revealed that a social network attack allowed hackers to control accounts of 50 million people. According to an official statement issued by the network on Friday (28), the attackers exploited a vulnerability in the "see how" function. Because of the security measures taken by the social network, the affected users were disconnected from their profiles on all devices to which they were connected.
READ: Facebook scam steals bank details from Brazilians; understand
Facebook notification informs users about security breach in social network Photo: Reproduo / Eduardo Manhes
In all, about 90 million people will need to log in to Facebook again on the browser and on their cell phone, in addition to all the services that use the password of the social network, the 50 million proven to be affected by the invasion and another 40 million who used the function "see like "in the last year. Whoever is logged out, when entering again, see a message at the top of the News Feed explaining what happened.
The company has already disabled the feature with the security breach and has promised a thorough analysis to understand the attack. "We have already fixed the vulnerability and are informing the authorities about what happened," the statement said on the official blog.
The breach was discovered earlier this week, but the code with the security breach was implemented on the social network in 2017, with the "see how" function, which lets the profile owner view their information and know how it is displayed to users. others. The attack, which stole users' access tokens, allowed hackers to access personal information and even take control of profiles.
Facebook request to re-login the platform in connected third-party apps Photo: Reproduo / Thssius Veloso
Facebook said it is not necessary to change the password. However, if the user wants to log out as a precaution, he must go to Settings> Security and Login. In this area, there are all the devices that are connected to Facebook and it is possible to leave them all at the same time. Anyone who needs to log in again, but forgot their password, should contact the Help Center.
In his personal profile, Mark Zuckerberg admitted the need to continue investing in security: "although I am happy that we found this, corrected the vulnerability and protected the accounts that may be at risk, the reality that we need to continue developing new tools to prevent that happens in the first place ", he explained.
Earlier this year, Facebook was also involved in a data leak controversy, the Cambridge Analytica case. The accusation involves the marketing company Cambridge Analytica, which illegally obtained profile data to be used in Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2017. With the information, it was possible to draw a psychological profile to offer more assertive political advertising to users. The situation was the result of a flexible Facebook guideline between 2007 and 2014. During this period, the platform provided profile data to application developers, in order to help improve the software for the social network.
