It was recently discovered that the personal data and phone numbers of hundreds of millions of users Facebook leaked to the net. All of this information was posted on a recently discovered low-level hacker forum.
According to the report BusinessInsiderThe data breach includes personal information and phone numbers of 533 million users of the popular social media platform. Data is sourced from approximately 106 countries, including 32 million US users, 11 million UK users, 6 million India users and many more. In the leak, personal data includes users' phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, location, dates of birth, biographical information, and even in some cases, email addresses.
According to a Facebook spokesman, the data found on the Internet has been effectively wiped out due to a vulnerability that the company patched back in 2019. Although the information is outdated, it can still provide valuable information for cybercriminals who can use this information to impersonate people and trick others to pass on login credentials.
Alon Gal, CTO of the intelligence company Hudson Rock, said that “a database of this size containing personal information such as the phone numbers of many Facebook users will certainly lead attackers to use the data to perform social engineering. attacks [or] hacking attempts ”. Gal also added that there is little the company can do at this point as the information is already in the public domain, but advised users to be wary of phishing schemes or scams.
