533 Million Facebook Users Personal Data Leaked

Facebook gets hacked to reveal its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone number! However, Mark Zuckerberg’s details aren’t the only ones to be leaked. Along with his personal details, the personal details of 553 million users have been hacked and posted online.

Mark Zuckerberg’s details including his location, cell phone number, and date of birth were published on a forum for hackers. His cofounders Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz too had faced such horrifying experiences in the past.

Facebook however denies his hack. They say that the data published is old and pertains to 2019, and that the issue was fixed at that time.

The personal details of the users is being offered for a few Euros worth of digital credit. Several journalists and researchers have been able to match a few known phone numbers with the published list, lending credibility to the leaked data.

The attack has targeted users across 106 countries. This is not the first large scale hack attack on Facebook. Facebook has been targeted on a large scale previously in 2018 and 2019 as well.

In 2018, Facebook disabled a feature whereby users could search for others with the help of phone number. But by then, the political firm, Cambridge Analytica had accessed almost 87 million user data without any consent.

In 2019, a Ukrainian-based security researcher found data of almost 267 million users on the web. However, this attack was primarily localized to users of the USA.

It is believed that the hacked data is now saved on a server that is not protected by a password. Facebook claims that the number of user data leaked may be exaggerated due to duplicates.

Facebook has had several run-ins with its data being hacked and exploited. There have also been instances of third-party apps targeting the data and then being used for ransomware.

Now the data breach notification service have Have I Been Pwned has added the leaked data to it’s breach notification service to determine data was exposed in the leak.

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Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.