Security researcher Bob Diachenko has discovered a database containing the personal information of more than 267 million Facebook users, including full name, user ID, phone number, etc. posted publicly on Internet and allow anyone to have easy access.
According to Bob Diachenko, the database was first appeared on the Internet since December 4, but was shared as private data. As of December 12, the database was shared publicly on a forum for hackers and allowed people to download it to their computers for free.
Bob Diachenko said that at the present time, this database is no longer accessible, but the internal data may have been distributed and used in many places.
The personal information contained in the database is largely owned by Facebook users in the United States, besides by a small number of users in European and Asian countries. This information can be used to become the target of spam messages or information about a user's name and phone number that can be used for other frauds or even blackmail. .
Bob Diachenko studied further and tracked down the origin of the above database, then discovered signs that hackers in Vietnam are the culprits of stealing and distributing fish information. personalities of the users. However, it is still not clear how the hackers stole this information.
Initial comments by Bob Diachenko suggest that it is likely that hackers stole users' information through APIs (application programming interfaces) for Facebook application developers, where the Developers can access sensitive information from Facebook.
However, after the Cambridge Analytica user information scandal in 2018, Facebook removed information about a user's phone number from its API, suggesting that it's likely that the phone number of the user. In the database shared by hackers online are old phone numbers from 2018.
Currently, Facebook has yet to comment on the incident.
Notably, this is not the first time Facebook phone number information has been leaked on the Internet. In September, information of more than 419 million Facebook users was also leaked, including information about their full name, date of birth, nationality, phone number … especially, among them there are also 50 million people. Facebook use in Vietnam is affected.
This incident once again made many people worried about Facebook's ability to protect user personal information, as more and more users trust this social network and share almost full information. Your private message with Facebook.