More than 50 million Facebook accounts may have been compromised in security breach

Facebook has revealed that accounts pwned by more than 50 million of its users may have been affected in a security breach.

The news was revealed by Facebook last week, the company first discovered the issue on the 25th of September, so it would appear that they are informing users just after the problem occured.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 25, our engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security.

Our investigation is still in its early stages. But it’s clear that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As” a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts. Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they don’t need to re-enter their password every time they use the app.

You can find out more details about the security breach over at Facebook at the link below.

Source Facebook