It seems like Facebook want to be next to Coronavirus in terms of popularity in the coming weeks. As the social media was mingled up with the jokes on Facebook-Jio deal, yet again a new update has popped up.
The cybersecurity firm, Sophos, reported a database consisting of 267 million Facebook user profiles was being sold on the dark web for £500 or USD $540 (Rs 41,033 approximately), which is about 0.0002 cents per record. This data base contained Facebook users’ IDs, in addition to full names, email addresses, phone numbers, timestamps for last connection, relationship status and age. However, there are no reports of passwords being exposed.
Interestingly, there is an another flip to this. This report coincides with the last year’s report by Diachenko. The report stated,
‘A database containing personal details of quite 267 million Facebook users was allegedly left exposed on the online , consistent with a report from Britain-based tech research firm Comparitech and security researcher Bob Diachenko.
Diachenko believes the trove of data — including Facebook user IDs, phone numbers and names — is most likely the result of an illegal scraping operation or Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam.
“Scraping” may be a term wont to describe a process during which automated bots quickly sift through large numbers of sites , copying data from all into a database.
The information contained within the database might be wont to conduct large-scale SMS spam and phishing campaigns, among other threats to finish users, said the report on Thursday, adding that most of the affected users were from the US.’
The firm also asks users to tighten up security in their Facebook accounts as this data could be used by cybercriminals for social media attacks. This could be done by enabling two-factor verification in the respective accounts.
Researchers purchased and verified the info themselves and have created a database for users to see and see if their email was included within the breach which may be viewed at AmIBreached.com.
Phishing scams use information like email addresses and Facebook ID’s to craft scams that fake Facebook login pages.
When a victim types their login info into the sector , hackers are ready to scrape their passwords and other sensitive information which might be used for other nefarious purposes outside of Facebook.
