Facebook's New Data Breach : 120 Million Accounts Compromised

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Facebook is back in the news as a report by BBC says that personal messages of 120 million users have been hacked. The news is claimed by the hackers themselves and for a proof they have already compromised the personal messages of 81,000 users through advertisements. The hackers are willing to sell the data of 120 million users at $0.10 per account. The report says that majority of the accounts which are compromised are based in Russia and Ukraine and some accounts are also from US, UK and Brazil. The hackers published the news of the data breach through a listed advertisement. The advertisement has now been removed.

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Facebook claimed that there has not been any breach and that the messages were obtained through malicious extensions. The Digital Shadows claimed that the huge number of 120 million victims in quite unlikely to happen as the Facebook would not have missed such a huge breach. The Digital Shadows and BBC Russian Service also confirmed from the victims that the messages displayed were real and that the 81,000 profiles showed as a sample contained private messages.

Facebook executive Guy Rosen said, "We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores. We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts".

The malicious extensions quietly monitors user's activities and then sends the data back to the hackers without user's knowledge, explained by Facebook. On investigation BBC told that the breach is not linked with Cambridge Analytica and the September breach. The users are advised to download only legit extensions.