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A hacker had access to nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts by exploiting a weak social network systems, Facebook said Friday.
The news of the cyber-attack – which seems to be one of the biggest in Facebook's history – has reduced the company's shares by around 3% by midday Friday, compounding the chaos currently weighs on society.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg organized a conference call with reporters shortly after the news announcement, highlighting the seriousness of the situation.
"We do not know yet if these accounts were misused, but we continue to interest ourselves and we will update when we learn more," said Zuckerberg in an article on Friday.
The tech company Silicon Valley announced Tuesday that an unknown attacker, or attackers, had taken advantage of a security breach to take control of user accounts. The flaw was related to the "View As" feature that allows users to see what their own profile looks like through the eyes of another user, explained Facebook.
"It allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens, which they could then use to seize people's accounts," wrote Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen in an article. separate.
"Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that allow users to log in to Facebook and do not need to re-enter their password each time they use the ################################################################################# 39; application. "
Facebook says that it is not yet clear who is behind the attack.
During the conference call, Rosen said there was no evidence that users' private messages had been compromised, but cautioned that this could change as the process continued. It's not clear either on why people have been targeted or why.
The revelation comes a day after a famous Taiwanese hacker publicly declared his intention to delete Zuckerberg's Facebook account and broadcast the exploit. Facebook representatives said during the conference call that they did not think the cyberattack was related to the Taiwan hacker.
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