Thousands of private Facebook messages were recently compromised. According to the BBC, the British broadcaster and news network received information that Facebook accounts had been breached. The source itself was, surprisingly, the hackers who orchestrated the attack.
But the cause of it? Third-party browser extensions that were installed by the users themselves and later exploited by hackers.
Specifically, personal shopping assistants, task-specific applications, and even game extension were reported as the reason why hackers were able to infiltrate the victim’s social media account. In total, the hackers made off with the details of over 120 million accounts. Out of that 120 million approximately 81000 of them were believed to contain private and intimate messages. Many of which originated from Russian and Ukrainian users.
To add insult to injury, the hacker were also selling the private message on an online forum, at a price of US$0.10 (~RM0.42). That’s less than RM1 for a portion of a conversation that could very contain sensitive information.
At the time of writing, Facebook has stated that it was working with both the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to take down the forum where the information is being sold. At the same time, the social network also took down the extensions that were causing the problem.
