Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, announced that hackers gained access to 50 million accounts. How is Facebook handling the incident?
Hacked
The company says it does not know who the hackers were or where they were located. It does, however, say that the hackers gained access by exploiting a bug in Facebook’s code. The bug granted them access to 50 million access tokens. These tokens are what keep a user signed in after they leave or close Facebook.
With these access tokens, the hackers could log in as the users. They could post to Facebook and send private messages. Zuckerberg’s own account was also at risk.
Facebook Response
But the company says that it does not appear that the hackers did anything with the accounts before it caught the breach. Zuckerberg told reporters Friday, “We do not yet know if any of the accounts were actually misused.” Also, Facebook also says that it has fixed the programming error.
Guy Rosen is Facebook’s vice president of product management. He said, “We haven’t yet been able to determine if there was specific targeting” of particular accounts. “It does seem broad. And we don’t yet know who was behind these attacks and where they might be based.”
