Last week, there were reports of having over 50 million Facebook accounts attacked. The data breach affected 50 million users worldwide and this caused an alarm to everyone who is using social media. What was this security breach? Did it ever occur to you that while you were using Facebook, you got automatically kicked out with the error “Session Expired, Please Log in Again?” This was based on the attack and if you experienced that, you need to have a Facebook password reset.
These attackers, once they have access to Facebook users and profiles, can lead to them being able to control access tokens of each profile. These access tokens can have personal information that is confidential and sensitive. The social media giant admitted the security breach via their engineering team and was able to resolve it even before law enforcement have been informed.
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What did these attackers do?
The attack was that these hackers stole Facebook access tokens through the site’s “view as” feature. This “view as” feature allows a certain profile to look at their profile if they’re another person. Basically, it’s like looking at their own account from the eyes of a different person. This feature allowed hackers to infiltrate the system and steal access tokens.
What are access tokens?
Access tokens can be compared to keys of your house; they’re just keys to whatever you do and save in Facebook. These digital keys are responsible for keeping people logged in to their accounts to keep them from entering their passwords multiple times through the Facebook application.
Facebook, in turn, reset the access tokens of the people who were affected. In addition to that, they also reset the access tokens for 40 million other users that used the “view as” feature last year. As users, we need to ensure that we undergo a Facebook password reset in order for us to be sure that we’re not going to be experiencing this again.
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Facebook said that about 90 million users would have to log back in to their applications because of them resetting their access tokens. Moreso, they said that these people won’t need to make a password reset but a local IT expert says otherwise.
A local IT expert and adviser Jerry Liao, told his fellow Filipinos to have a Facebook password reset to be sure. He even said that all other account and websites linked to our Facebook account can actually be damaged as well. In addition, they can use those other information to get back inside your Facebook account especially if you have a single password across all of your accounts.
Just to make sure, even if sinasabi ng Facebook ngayon na naayos nila ‘yung sistema… Baka meron pang ibang natitira diyan, baka may weakness pa. We are now using our Facebook account to register dun sa iba’t ibang application. ‘Yung third party application, ang ginagamit mo Facebook din. Kung na-compromise ka, lahat ito, makukuha din,” explained Liao.
According to reports, this could be the worst potential security breach given the level of accesses that were stolen and compromised. So, to be sure, change your password and include special different characters, lower and upper case letters, and numbers. A combination of this can be strong and can defer hackers from trying to get different ways to access your account.
To add to that, you regularly use public devices and public wi-fis, make it a habit to clear cache and cookies in the device and on your device as well (for public wi-fis). By doing this, you’re removing leftover data that can be connected to your Facebook activity while you were connected.
With these new types of hacks, it’s safe to say that cybercriminals can have access to our accounts easily. So, to be safe 100 percent of the time, make sure to delete everything after using it. Moreso, if you’re using public wi-fi, double check and see whether or not it’s safe to connect to that and if it’s something that is legal and regulated.
Hackers use public wi-fi to trick people to connect to them. What people don’t know is that that source is actually their pool wherein they gain access over people’s devices like laptops, tablets, cellphones, even computers.
So, double check everything before you actually connect to them because you might not know you’re already being hacked.
Facebook is one of the websites millions of people visit every single day. So, it’s a fiesta for hackers and for cyber criminals. That’s more reason why you should always keep it safeguarded and secure and you can do that by ensuring that every device you have is under your control.
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