After the “massacre” that hit Facebook … has your data been disclosed?

A few days ago, the whole world was buzzing with high-caliber news, as a “hacking massacre” was announced on Facebook, affecting half a billion users in 106 countries in 2019.

Although the data comes from a security breach in Facebook platforms which the company says has since fixed, security experts have noted that fraudsters can use the information for “nefarious purposes such as spam and automated communication, ”according to the Wall Street Journal.

(Expressive)

European regulators have also asked Facebook for more details on the data leak. Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday that the data breach reflected the continued need to monitor the actions of bad actors on its platform.

So, is your Facebook data leaked? Here’s what you need to know according to the newspaper.

How do you know if your information has been disclosed?

The blue social media giant did not say whether it will notify users to check if their information has been scanned in the incident. But some cybersecurity experts have created sites that let people know if their information is included in a data breach.

One of those sites is hasibeenpwned.com, where you can enter your phone number or email address and see the result. The site was created by Australian web security adviser Troy Hunt.

Additionally, Facebook did not immediately comment on the reliability of these third-party sites.

What data has been disclosed?

The data included phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, origin and marital status of users in many countries around the world.

What should you do to protect your account?

Enabling two-factor authentication to log into Facebook is a good step. You will then be asked to enter a special login code or confirm your login attempt each time someone tries to access your Facebook account from an unknown browser or mobile device.

(Expressive)

How was data stolen from Facebook?

Facebook says the vulnerability was the result of a weakness in the company’s contact import function, an issue it noted was identified and fixed in August 2019.

To fix the problem, the company blocked people from finding users by phone number on Facebook and Instagram. In 2019, he found that software could be used to provide phone numbers associated with specific users.

This tactic allowed someone to query a group of user profiles and obtain specific information from their public profiles. The data was pulled from the platform before the changes made by Facebook and then sold by hackers.

(Expressive)

What happened to the data?

Hackers began selling the data online to presenters soon after it was accessed. Alon Gall, chief information officer at cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, said the data was initially sold for tens of thousands of dollars and the price continued to drop until recently it became available for free on sites like raidforums.com.

Hackers often post the data for free after it has circulated long enough, according to Zach Allen, director of threat intelligence at ZeroFOX, a Baltimore-based cybersecurity company.

What can hackers do with the data?

“The number of affected accounts (approximately 533 million) is high,” said Alex Holden, chief information officer of Hold Security LLC. But he added that most of it was semi-public information which is often posted on Facebook pages anyway. The compromised data does not include more sensitive information such as passwords, credit card information, or social security numbers.

Additionally, he explained that the information could be used for “social violations” such as robotic calls and spam emails.

According to Zach Allen, fraudsters can use the data resulting from the hack to send malicious text messages, and they can also try to enter certain phone numbers using SIM card swapping technology because they use the information. personal stolen in the hack to exchange the phone number with another device.