Facebook users have been urged to take a number of urgent steps, including changing their password and activating anti-fraud protection on their bank account, as the major social network has potentially fallen victim to the largest data breach in history.
An unfortunate consequence of centralized databases on the internet is that websites - especially social media platforms - become a digital goldmine for hackers looking to harvest information.
Only last week did one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges become exposed to a major breach that could cost them $400 million, and experts are currently warning the US government against measures that would make it far easier for hackers to exploit.
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However, one major site that has indeed become a victim of a data breach though is Facebook, and it's not just any old incident either as it is speculated to be the largest in history, affecting around 1,200,000,000 users.
As reported by the Daily Mail, a cybercriminal using the alias 'ByteBreaker' is claiming that they've managed to exploit Facebook's Application Programming Interface (API) in order to access the data of over 1.2 billion users.
This data supposedly includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and location data, which is all extremely valuable in of itself, but it holds a far more damaging potential when placed in the wrong hands.
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ByteBreaker is currently selling the data on the dark web, which would allow someone to use the information accessed to potentially open new credit cards or access current financial accounts, which is extremely dangerous.
Therefore, experts have urged all Facebook users to not only change their account passwords, but also potentially freeze their credit and enable any fraud alerts or protection on their bank accounts in order to prevent any malicious individuals from taking advantage of your data.
One potentially major twist though lies in Meta's decision to cast doubt on the veracity of ByteBreaker's claims, with Facebook's parent company alleging that there hasn't actually been a breach and the hacker is making it all up.
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ByteBreaker has shared a 100,000 user sample to 'prove' that their attack was real, but Meta claims that the information shared here is from a previous data breach that occurred years ago.
"This is from 2021, so it's not a new claim," outlined Meta in a statement last week. "We disclosed this years ago and have taken steps to prevent similar incidents from happening."
Additionally, some argue that the hacker's explanation of the breach doesn't line up, as they claim that the data was stored in '200 million rows' in Facebook's interface, but with 1.2 billion accounts it's highly likely that the row count would be much higher.
Regardless of whether ByteBreaker actually managed to breach Facebook or not, you're still urged to take preventative measures as the damage that could be done if the attack happened still holds a significant risk that's best avoiding through any means possible.