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A BBC investigation found that hackers stole private messages from more than 81,000 Facebook accounts.
Hackers have posted ads, one of which has been spotted by the BBC on an English web forum, offering to sell access to the accounts of Internet users at 10 cents each.
The BBC discovered the announcement in September, which stated, "We sell personal information about Facebook users." Our database contains 120 million accounts. " Cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows investigated this claim and found that more than 81,000 accounts put online as an example contained private messages.
Digital Shadows also confirmed that personal information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, from 176,000 other accounts had been posted, but that they may have been deleted because the accounts in question were not had not hidden them.
The BBC said that there was reason to believe that the $ 120 million request was exaggerated.
Many of the users would be based in Ukraine and Russia, although users have been deployed in many other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil. One of the websites on which hackers have posted data was established in St. Petersburg.
The Russian BBC service contacted five Russian users affected by the piracy and confirmed that the messages belonged to them. The messages included holiday photos, complaints about a son-in-law and an "intimate" conversation between two lovers.
Not a Facebook flaw
Facebook said that the messages had not been obtained by a security flaw, but rather by a suspicious browser extension.
"Based on our investigation up to now, we believe that this information was obtained via malicious browser extensions installed on Facebook," said Guy Rosen, Facebook's executive, in a statement sent to Business Insider.
"We have contacted the browser manufacturers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available for download in their stores and to share information that may help identify additional extensions that may be associated. We have also contacted law enforcement and collaborated with local authorities to remove the website that posts Facebook account information, and we encourage users to check the browser extensions they have installed and delete those they are not fully confident and as we continue our investigation, we will take the necessary steps to secure user accounts. "
Many people add extensions to their browser, such as ad blockers or spell checkers.
