50 Million User Account Affected By Security Breach- Facebook Says | Jeremy Spell Blog

Facebook says it has discovered a security
breach affecting about 50 million user
accounts which could have allowed hackers
to access those accounts.
The social media giant said Friday it has
taken steps to fix the security problem and
alerted law enforcement.
The company said hackers exploited the
“View As” feature, which lets users see how
their own profiles would look to other
people.
It said hackers were then able to use the
security flaw to steal log-in keys, called
access tokens, that would allow them to
access people’s accounts.
“It’s clear that attackers exploited a
vulnerability in Facebook’s code,” vice
president of product management Guy
Rosen said in a blog post.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg
said the company does not know if any
accounts were actually misused. He said
Facebook discovered the breach on
Tuesday, and patched it on Thursday night.
Facebook said it took an additional
“precautionary step” of resetting the logins
of 90 million users. This will require those
users to log back in to Facebook the next
time they try to access their account.
The breach is the latest privacy
embarrassment for Facebook, which earlier
this year acknowledged that a political
consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica,
gained access to the personal data from
millions of user profiles.
Facebook has also come under criticism for
fake political ads posted on its site from
Russia and other countries.
Zuckerberg appeared at a Congressional
hearing over the company’s privacy policies
in April.
Facebook has more than 2 billion users
worldwide.