The private information – including phone numbers and other data – of more than half a billion Facebook accounts is being made publicly available on a hacking forum online, and almost for free.
Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, revealed that the packets appear to be the same phone numbers and other information related to Facebook accounts that have been circulating in hacker circles since January, Reuters reported. The existence of the private packets was first reported by technology publication Motherboard.
The information is on sale publicly for a few euros on a well-known low-level hacking forum website. It was revealed that the data involved more than 533 million accounts covering 106 countries. More than 32 million of the records were U.S. accounts, 11 million records were from the U.K. and 6 million records were from India. The data includes the full names of Facebook users, as well as Facebook IDs, locations, dates of birth, bios, phone numbers and email addresses. Reuters was not immediately able to review the private information.
Gayle said on Saturday (April 3) that he had confirmed the authenticity of at least some of the data by comparing it to the phone numbers of people he knew. Some other journalists said they were also able to match their known phone numbers with some of the specific information in that data.
Facebook said in a statement that the data was “very old” and related to an issue the company is addressing in August 2019.
Reuters tried to contact the leaker through the instant messaging service Telegram, but was not immediately successful.
Gayle told Reuters that Facebook accounts should be wary of “social engineering attacks” by people who may gain access to their phone numbers or other private data in the coming months. Social engineering attacks are a type of cyber attack that uses “social engineering” to carry out.
The news of the leaked Facebook account information was first reported by the Business Insider website.
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