Facebook tentatively concludes that spammers are behind the recent data breach: WSJ

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc (FB.O) provisionally concluded that spammers seeking to earn money, and not a nation-state, were behind the largest data theft ever recorded in the social media business, reported Wednesday the Wall Street Journal.

The perpetrators of this attack were a group of Facebook and Instagram spammers who introduced themselves as a digital marketing company and whose activities were previously known to Facebook's security team, the newspaper reported, citing people close to the Internet. internal investigation of the company. on.wsj.com/2OvMarh

Last week, Facebook said that cyber-attackers had stolen data from 29 million Facebook accounts using an automated program that went from one friend to the other, adding that the theft of data had affected less than 50 million profiles initially reported.

Facebook said in an email to Reuters that he was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on this.

This flaw has made users more vulnerable to targeted phishing attacks and could compound the discomfort of publishing on a service whose privacy, moderation and security practices have been challenged by a number of scandals, said cyber security experts and financial analysts.

Facebook first unveiled the offense at the end of September and stated that she had solved the problem shortly after discovering it on September 25th.

Facebook said that it was conducting an internal investigation into the incident and that last week the number of affected users was reduced from its original estimate after investigators had examined the activity potentially affected accounts.

She had also briefed the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, congressional advisers and the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters.