Facebook Acknowledges It Was Hacked

Hackers have long targeted all sorts of companies, government agencies and other organizations for cyber attacks that could expose consumers to identity theft, and now the world's most popular social network has acknowledged that it, too, was recently hacked.

Facebook was targeted in an attack in January that potentially exposed a large amount of data, after a number of its employees visited the site of a mobile developer that had been compromised by hackers, according to a report from the social network's security team. Once visited, the site automatically uploaded malware onto the employees' laptops, which were fully patched and running the latest anti-virus software. Facebook notes that it acted quickly to fix the problem once it was discovered, and also contacted law enforcement and began an internal investigation into the incident.

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Facebook Security's dedicated internal threat tracking and infrastructure monitoring team spotted the potentially compromised domain in the company's logs soon after the first incident and quickly traced them back to one affected laptop, the report said. Following a deep forensic investigation of one such computer, they found the malware file, then were able to search all other computers the company owns and likewise flag others that were also compromised. The team also reported the incident to Oracle, which issued a patch to address the vulnerability the hackers exploited in their initial attack.

It should also be noted that the social network has yet to find any evidence whatsoever that users' personal data was in any way compromised by the attack, which it believes was rather sophisticated, the report said. In addition, the company says it will continue to work with law enforcement as well as the organizations that were affected by the attack to ensure that there are proper safeguards in place to help protect them from taking place in the future as well.

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Identity theft can cause significant problems for consumers because it can lead not only to financial difficulties, but also those related to a person's credit standing, which can take months or even years to completely remedy. Therefore, it's important for consumers to carefully check their financial accounts every month and regularly order copies of their credit reports to ensure that no one is using their payment or personal information to open fraudulent accounts or make unauthorized purchases.

Image: Life Mental Health