Hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers and emails have been posted in a low-level hacking forum. Buried in the reports is that Facebook knew about this leak as early as January of this year and did nothing to contain it.
Hackers published personal information, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and email addresses, publicly on a hacker forum. Shockingly, Facebook – and the wider Internet – was made aware of this breach as early as January of this year. The big tech platform seemingly did nothing to mitigate the damage.
Business Insider reported that “A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019” and “he leaked data could provide valuable information to cybercriminals who use people’s personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who first discovered the entire trough of leaked data online on Saturday.”
Moreover, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly affected by the platform’s data leak of phone numbers.
Cybersecurity researcher Dave Walker joked, “If journalists are struggling to get a statement from Facebook, maybe just give him a call… ?”
Forsided, 05.04.2021