Facebook users are at risk once again. The social media titan revealed on Friday that the accounts of nearly 50 million users were breached after attackers exploited a feature in the site’s code.
The breach was discovered Tuesday afternoon. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says they don’t know if users’ personal info was obtained by the attackers, as they are still in the early phase of investigating, but the company patched the vulnerably Thursday night and alerted the FBI Wednesday.
Zucky explained that the site is under “constant attacks” but it will step up efforts to lock down users’ accounts. Over 90 million users were forced to log out of their accounts Friday morning as a security precaution.
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As for what exactly happened, the attackers seem to have exploited a weakness in the site’s code in its “View As” feature that lets users see what their profile looks like to someone else. This allowed attackers to steal Facebook access tokens — the digital keys that keep users logged in — in order to take over people’s accounts.
Facebook has yet to identify the attackers or the origin of the attack, but has reset the access tokens of 90 million users as a security measure. Maybe reset your passwords, too, just in case.
[Image via David R.Rico/WENN]
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