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Facebook has been under the microscope since the Cambridge Analytica scandal was revealed and the social networking platform tries to handle every situation with care. Another data breach targeting the personal messages of thousands of users adds to the problems of the world's largest social media network, which has more than 2 billion users around the world.
The BBC reported that hackers claim to have personal data belonging to more than 120 million Facebook account holders and are willing to sell them for money quickly. To prove the legitimacy of the data breach, hackers published private Facebook messages of nearly 81,000 users.
The BBC also contacted a number of affected Facebook users and was able to confirm that the data disclosed was legitimate. The report stated that in addition to the 81,000 accounts whose private messages had been disclosed online, data from an additional 176,000 accounts was also available, but that e-mail addresses and phone numbers could have been retrieved. members who had not hidden them.
After further investigation, BBC Russian Service contacted five users whose private messages were leaked online and could verify the authenticity of these messages.
"One example included recent holiday photos, another about a recent Depeche Mode concert, and a third about complaints about a son-in-law, and there was an intimate match between two lovers," the BBC reported.
The perpetrators of the orchestrated attack against Facebook users would sell the stolen data at 10 cents per account. The users concerned are mainly based in Ukraine and Russia, but the attack also extends to other countries, including Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The advertisement for the sale of millions of account information has since been removed, but the advertiser told the BBC, contacted as a buyer, that the hacker group could provide data from 120 million accounts . However, Digital Shadows, a cybersecurity company that reviewed BBC data, was skeptical of the statement, saying Facebook was unlikely to miss such a violation.
In fact, unlike the previous period, Facebook should not be held responsible for the data breach. The company told the newspaper that its systems were not compromised and that this could be due to malicious browser extensions affecting users installed on their browsers.
"We have contacted the browser makers to make sure that known malicious browser extensions are no longer available for download in their stores," said Facebook director Guy Rosen in a statement. "We also contacted law enforcement and worked with local authorities to remove the website posting information from Facebook accounts."
Best practice is to avoid installing browser extensions from unverified sources. If you have installed extensions, you should take a look at their developers and make sure you trust them before continuing to use them. Even though Facebook should not be held responsible for the latest attack, it does not give a good idea of the social media platform.
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