September 12, 2021 6 min to read

Facebook Breach Decoded

Our take on the 533 MILLION users data leak !

Recently, the multinational social media company - Facebook came on Headlines when 533 MILLION active user’s data was leaked and uploaded on the internet after a security breach! So, what went wrong?! Lets find out!

WHAT IS A DATA BREACH?

An action of share/release of private/confidential information of a particular source without his/her knowledge publicly to an untrusted environment is called Data Breach.

VIEWS ON THE TOPIC

The social media company said it found and fixed the issue in August 2019 and its confident the same route can no longer be used to scrape that data.

In July 2019, months before patching up the aforementioned issue, Facebook reached a $5 billion settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for violating an agreement with the agency to protect user privacy.

“Scammers can do an enormous amount with little information from us,” - CyberScout founder Adam Levin, a cybersecurity expert and consumer protection advocate.

In the case of this breach, he said,

“It’s serious when phone numbers are out there. The danger when you have phone numbers in particular is a universal identifier.”

WHAT WAS LOST?

• Phone numbers, full names, locations, some email addresses, and other details from user profiles were posted to an amateur hacking forum on Saturday-> Business Insider reported.
• Even the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s private credentials are part of the larger leaked data set from 2019.

Where is this data now, and for what can it be used?

The stolen information can be used to send spam emails, make calls, mount phishing campaigns and target advertising. It can be used to plot and execute various nefarious online fraud schemes. Hackers can impersonate users and transfer cash on their behalf, without their knowledge.

The database of private information is now available on dark web for anyone to sift through.

HOW WAS THE BREACH DONE?

• Facebook claims hackers obtained user data through data scraping — a process used by people to import data from a website onto a local file that is saved in a computer. The social networking giant also noted in a blog post that “the specific issue that allowed them [hackers] to scrape this data in 2019 no longer exists.”

• Malicious actors exploited a weakness in the feature to gain access to user ID, address, phone number, email address, names of workplaces, date of birth, date of account creation, and other personal identifiable information. They then leaked this data in the dark web.

• The stolen information can be used to send spam emails, make calls, mount phishing campaigns and target advertising. It can be used to plot and execute various nefarious online fraud schemes. Hackers can impersonate users and transfer cash on their behalf, without their knowledge.

“A lot of companies like Facebook, Google and others provide their APIs to developers for several reasons. Hacker groups essentially use them to scrape data from these sites,” - Rajshekhar Rajaharia, a Rajasthan-based entrepreneur and cybersecurity researcher.

• Also, earlier, data of 500 million LinkedIn users were being sold online by an unknown hacker who had dumped two million users’ data as sample. Separately, online stock trading company Upstox’s data was stolen due to compromised Amazon Web Service (AWS) keys.

How can one check whether their data has been compromised?

1. Internet users seeking to know whether their data has been leaked or compromised, can visit HaveiBeenPawned.com. All they have to do is to key in their email id and check.

2. The leaked data has been put up for free on several forums. The details can be exploited by advertisers for targeted advertisements and by hackers to perform hacking attempts or social engineering attacks. Besides, anyone with rudimentary data skills can use the details to commit a cybercrime.

3. Earlier in 2018, it was revealed that political firm Cambridge Analytica mined data from 50 million Facebook profiles. The data gathered was used to help political candidates around the world to win elections. The revelations came in the backdrop of the US presidential elections of 2016 and the Brexit referendum.

It is not the first time that the data of Facebook users has been leaked online. In 2019, the same data (of 533 million Facebook users) was leaked and being sold on instant messaging platform Telegram for a fee of $20 per search. Similar data was again leaked in June 2020. Now, the data has re-surfaced online and this time, those who want to access the data can get it without having to pay anything at all.

COUNTERMEASURES:

1. Email address Avoid using your primary email address to create accounts on other websites or platforms. You should create and use a disposable ID for just this purpose.

2. Sign-in Options: Certain platforms offer the option to use your existing social media accounts to login. Though it is time-saving and hassle-free, this process is risky in case of a data breach. A hacker will not only get access to your social media account, but also all other linked websites.

3. Unique passwords It is no doubt painful to create a unique password for every website you visit. But it is a surefire tip to protect your personal data. Even if one website is breached, the data of only that account will be compromised.

4. Two-step verification It is highly recommended that you protect your apps and accounts by opting for a two-factor authentication (2FA) system. As the term suggests, it uses two steps to complete a login process.

5. Links in emails Be very careful about the links that are sent via emails. Hackers are known to replicate official looking emails incorporated with a malicious link and send them to unsuspecting users.

6. Site security Before sharing your personal information on a website, check if the URL starts with ‘https’ and there is a lock symbol before it. This indicates the website is safe and secure.

7. Privacy settings Every website, especially social media websites, have elaborate privacy controls for users. Go through them in detail to check where your private posts and photos are being seen.

8. Free Wifi Do not connect to unfamiliar wifi networks. Hackers can intercept and poision the wifi network, thereby gaining unauthorised access to all devices in the network.

9. Antivirus Software: Consider installing an antivirus software or anti-spyware software on your devices for an extra layer of protection against cyber attacks. eg: Avast , Norton 360 , McAffe etc.