It seems to be the year of data breaches at Facebook. The social networking website is back in news once again because of an alleged data breach. And this time, your personal messages on the platform are said to be targeted.
According to a report in BBC, almost 81,000 users’ personal messages on Facebook are published and compromised on the internet. Furthermore, the hackers are looking to make money from it.
In fact, the hackers have said that they have personal data of over 120 million people who have their accounts on Facebook and they plan to sell it $0.10 per account. However, if Facebook is to be believed, the social networking giant claims that its service has not suffered any breach. It further went on to say that the data that the hackers have been obtained by malicious extensions.
But even if that was true, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of the hackers indeed having access to users’ personal data and messages.
The report further says that most of the accounts whose personal messages and data has been compromised are based in Ukraine and Russia. However, some from UK, the US and Brazil have also been compromised.
The advertisement listed by hackers online says that if one pays $0.10 per account, they can get a complete access to personal messages. As a sample 81,000 profiles have been listed for potential buyers. However, this advertisement has now been removed.
According to BBC, who posed as potential buyers, the hackers are not linked to the Russian state or to the Internet Research Agency.
However, according to Digital Shadows, hackers’ claim to having access to 120 million users’ data could be false as Facebook would have known about such a large breach. But it did confirm that the 81,000 profiles did contain personal messages. Five of the victims were even contacted to confirm if the posts were really theirs.
According to Facebook executive Guy Rosen, “We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores. We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts.”
The social media giant maintains that this breach did not happen because of their fault.
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