Major Facebook data leak jeopardises 553 million users

On the warpath at Facebook. Last week-end, millions of Facebook accounts were compromised by professional hackers. Business Insider has revealed that the personal data of over 500 million users were absconded and put online for anyone to pilfer.

E-mail adress, personal data and phone numbers, all were made freely available on a hacker forum, reports Business Insider. In September 2019, the site had already reported a data leak of over 419 million accounts, then swiftly followed by another attack just months later, in December.

533 million Facebook accounts put in jeopardy

'All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free.' Alon Gal, chief technology officer of anti cyber-criminality agency Hudson Rock rang the alarm bell on Twitter last Saturday, trying to get the message out.

A Facebook spokesperson commented:

These were old data whose leak was already reported in media in 2019. We've found and fixed the issue in August 2019.

According to early estimations, over 11 million British accounts, and 32 millions accounts belonging to Americans were hit by the leak. And that's not all. Alon Gal announced people from 103 different countries had been impacted by the hack.

More and more frequent hackings

The hackers wil very likely use these data for 'scams, further hacking, and marketing,' the social media cyber-criminality expert reported.

It's not even the first time that the now bloated Facebook experiences a professional hacking of such scale. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal had made the headlines. This British office had acquired the personal data of dozens upon dozens of millons of Facebook users. And for what purpose? For political propaganda and opinion manipulation.