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SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook said Friday that an attack on its computer network had revealed the personal information of nearly 50 million users.
The company said it discovered the violation this week, saying the attackers had exploited a Facebook code feature that allowed them to support user accounts. The company said it corrected this vulnerability and notified the forces of order.
"We take this very seriously," Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company, told a conference call with reporters. "We have a major security effort in society that hardens all our surfaces". He added, "I'm glad we found that." But it is certainly a problem that this has occurred in the first place.
More than 90 million Facebook users were forced to log off their accounts on Friday morning, a common security measure adopted when accounts were compromised.
Facebook said it did not know the origin or identity of the attackers, nor did it assess the scope of the attack. The company said it was still at the beginning of its investigation.
Facebook said the attackers had exploited a bug in the "show as" feature of the site, which allows users to see their own profiles as if they were somebody else. The feature has been designed to allow users to control their privacy.
The company said the bug was compounded by the Facebook video download program, a software feature launched last year. The flaw allowed the attackers to steal access tokens, digital keys to access an account.
The attack was discovered while Facebook continues to face the consequences of its role in a vast campaign of misinformation led by Russia in the 2016 presidential election and the fallout of the scandal of the British consulting firm. Cambridge Analytica incorrectly collect the personal data of 87 million Facebook users. The company is also facing the prospect of federal regulation, while questions arise as to whether it has become too powerful.
One of the main challenges of the company has been to convince its users to be able to responsibly manage the incredible wealth of data to which it has access. More than two billion people use Facebook every month. Another two billion use WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned email application, and Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo sharing application.
"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can not use it, we do not deserve to serve you," Zuckerberg said. in a statement regarding Cambridge Analytica this year.
Even before the disclosure on Friday, Facebook has been involved in several federal investigations related to its broader data-sharing and privacy practices. The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into the company's statements regarding the Cambridge Analytica episode.
Facebook insists that it has put in place strict data sharing policies with third parties and has reduced the amount of data that it agrees to share with developers in the future. The company has suspended access to more than 400 third-party applications after auditing thousands of external applications connected to Facebook.
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