private messages from 81,000 accounts on sale

New mishap for the social network to the more than 2 billion registered users, the BBC has indeed revealed that data from 81 000 accounts have been put on sale on the internet: 10 cents per account!

120 million profiles possibly impacted

Scandals end in Facebook, from the Cambridge Analytica case to the many security vulnerabilities that benefit hackers, the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg is once again confronted with a thorny problem with this survey conducted by the service Russian BBC. Indeed, hackers seem to have compromised the data of a minimum of 81,000 Facebook users they would have all private conversations. In addition, although this information is not correlated, they claim to hold personal information from 120 million accounts. The vast majority of victims would be located in Russia and Ukraine, but also other countries such as the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom could be affected.

On its Facebook side ensures that its security has not been compromised. In reality the data would have been diverted via a third method. Still according to the BBC, hackers reportedly used Malicious browser extensions under Opera, Chrome and Firefox to collect user data. Although no extension name has filtered, Facebook has taken action and contacted browser publishers to remove access to these extensions. These included mini-games, bookmark applications, or shopping badistants.

Sold for 10 cents on a site linked to a Russian IP address, the data of its 81 000 accounts contained among others personal conversations of users, the website has since been disconnected. Facebook also said that users affected by this piracy will be warned in the near future.

In addition, data from 176,000 other accounts would also be found on this website. However, this time, no security flaw is involved because it would be publicly visible data on the platform and collected by a method of scraping.

Although the responsibility of Facebook is not directly questioned here, it is again a case that tarnishes the image of the company whose growth is slowing despite the growth of its turnover. There is no doubt that Facebook will have to work harder to secure its network to avoid cyber attacks such as the one that recently led to the hacking of more than 29 million accounts.