On Friday night Facebook admitted that hackers attacked it. As stated in the company’s blog spot, the pirates had exposed the data of nearly 50 million users.
Reportedly, Facebook was already notified about the security breach on Tuesday, but they publicized the information only on Friday.
The breach which took place this week was the largest in the company’s 14 years history. The hacktivist exploited a feature in Facebook’s code to obtain access to user accounts and potentially take control of them.
Last year too, Facebook has faced so much of controversy and pressure after the details of 83million users were accessed to British analytics firm.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on his FB status stated: “We do not yet know whether these accounts were misused, but we are continuing to look into this and will update when we learn more.”
Zuckerberg also informed the company has temporarily halted the feature that had the security vulnerability. The function is known as “View As” it’s a privacy tool that allows you to see how your profile would look to other people.
As an additional precautionary measure, the company is logging out the accounts of those who used the View As feature since the vulnerability was discovered. This will require another 40 million people or more to sign back into their minds.
“At present, we do not have any verification that suggests these accounts have been compromised, but we’re taking this step as a precautionary measure,” said Zuckerberg.
Facebook has apologized about the incident and informed that there is no need to change the passwords, but people who are having trouble logging back into Facebook can visit the Help Center.
“This has actually shown us that because today’s digital environment is so complex, a compromise on a single platform — especially one as well-liked and extensively reaching as Facebook — can have consequences that are much more far-reaching than what we can tell in early days of the probe,” told April Doss, chairwoman of cybersecurity at the law firm Saul Ewing.