WILL OREMUS - Facebook Can’t Say Why Users Should Still Trust It

By Dilip -
On Friday, Facebook announced a massive security breach—probably the most significant in its history. Taking advantage of three separate bugs in tandem, hackers gained full control of at least 50 million users’ Facebook accounts. That meant that, in theory, the users could do just about anything on those accounts: post status updates for you, download your photos, send messages to your friends, download your friends’ nonpublic photos, and much more. Facebook confirmed later on Friday that the breach would have also given hackers access to users’ accounts on third-party apps and websites for which they used their Facebook credentials to log in.

Facebook executives said in a call with reporters Friday afternoon that the company had learned of the attack on Tuesday, notified law enforcement on Wednesday, and had fixed the bugs by Thursday night. But Facebook doesn’t know yet who the hackers were, what they were after, or what they planned to do with any information they might have stolen.

We should learn more in the coming days and weeks about the extent of the breach and the nature of the damage. No doubt the company is investigating it urgently and sincerely. Unlike some other companies that have been the subjects of huge data breaches in recent years, Facebook has always had a reputation for taking infosec seriously. That it hasn’t suffered more breaches like this before now (that we know of), given what an attractive target it presents to hackers, is a tribute to its efforts.


But this attack was so sophisticated that Facebook’s vice president of product, Guy Rosen, said “we may never know” who perpetrated it… read more:
https://slate.com/technology/2018/09/facebook-data-breach-zuckerberg-trust.html

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