Major Facebook Data Breach Affects 90 Million Users

If you found yourself logged out of Facebook on Friday morning, you’re not alone. Facebook has suffered a major security breach affecting up to 90 million user accounts, the company reported.

This has certainly not been Facebook’s year. Yesterday, the social network confirmed that cybercriminals managed to steal information that allowed them to take control of 90 million user accounts. In recent months, Facebook has been working hard to regain user trust, and this incident is a significant setback.

The company stated that these 90 million users (out of a total of 2.2 billion) will need to log back into their accounts. For the 50 million users directly impacted by the breach, Facebook will display a special notification at the top of their news feed.

According to Facebook, the attackers may have accessed users’ names, hometowns, and gender. The company emphasized that other information may also have been compromised, but it’s too early to say for sure, as the investigation is still in its early stages.

Facebook assured users that no credit card information was exposed. There is also no evidence so far that the attackers tried to access private messages or send spam from affected accounts.

Mark Zuckerberg himself commented on the incident:

“This is a very serious issue, and we are committed to resolving it. This situation proves that there are always malicious actors trying to gain control of our users’ accounts or steal their personal data,” said the Facebook CEO.

The cybercriminals were able to successfully attack the tech giant by exploiting three interconnected vulnerabilities on the site. These security flaws allowed the attackers to gain access to user accounts.

According to the company, the attackers took advantage of a weakness in the “View As” feature, which lets users see their own profile as someone else would. The video uploader built into this feature incorrectly generated security tokens, which the attackers exploited. As a result, Facebook has disabled the “View As” option. At this time, the company does not know who is behind the attack.

Yesterday, it also emerged that Facebook was involved in another questionable use of user data. It was revealed that the company has been sharing users’ phone numbers with advertisers, who use them for targeted advertising.