Facebook admits public data of its 2.2 billion users has been compromised

Facebook admits public data of its 2.2 billion users has been compromised 

Facebook dropped another bombshell on its users by admitting that all of its 2.2 billion users should assume malicious third-party scrapers have compromised their public profile information.

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that "malicious actors" took advantage of "Search" tools on its platform to discover the identities and collect information on most of its 2 billion users worldwide.

The revelation once again underlines the failure of the social-media giant to protect users’ privacy while generating billions of dollars in revenue from the same information.

The revelation came weeks after the disclosure of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein personal data of 77 million users was improperly gathered and misused by the political consultancy firm, who reportedly also helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016.

However, the latest scam revealed by the social media giant about the abuse of Facebook's search tools over the course of several years impacts almost all of its 2.2 billion users, making it the worst year for the world's largest social network.

"It is clear now that we didn't do enough, we didn't focus enough on preventing abuse," Zuckerberg told press reporters. "We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake."

The company said it had disabled the feature—which allows anyone to look up users by entering phone numbers or email addresses into Facebook's search tool—in its site's search function that enabled malicious actors to scrape public profile information.

Here's How Scrapped Data Could Have Helped Cybercriminals

As mentioned above, the source of this scam was Facebook's search function, which was turned on by default. Hackers took help of "Dark Web," where criminals post personal information of users stolen from data breaches over the years, to collect.

Once they had their hands on email addresses and phone numbers, the hackers then used automated computer programs to feed the email addresses and phone numbers into Facebook’s "search" box.

This scan allowed them to find out the full names of people associated with the email addresses or phone numbers, along with the Facebook profile information they chose to make public, which often includes names, profile photos, and hometown.

This collected information was then more likely to be used by cybercriminals to target particular individual using social engineering or other cyber attacks.

"Until today, people could enter another person’s phone number or email address into Facebook search to help find them. This has been especially useful for finding your friends in languages which take more effort to type out a full name, or where many people have the same name," Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said in a blog post describing changes the company has made to its service to protect its users’ data better.

"However, malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery. Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way."

While apologizing "second time" to its users, Zuckerberg said this feature has immediately been turned off, noting that the scraped profile information was only limited to what was publically viewable.

However, Zuckerberg defended gathering users' data for a business model, arguing "People tell us that if they’re going to see ads, they want the ads to be good."

"On the one hand, people want relevant experiences, and on the other hand there is some discomfort about how data is used," Zuck added. "I think the overwhelming feedback is for wanting a good experience."

Also, it was initially reported that Cambridge Analytica quiz app gathered data on some 50 million Facebook users, but Facebook revised that number upward by 74 percent, i.e., over 77 million.

In an effort to protect its users private data, Facebook is now restricting third-party apps from accessing users’ information about their relationship status, religious or political views, work history, education, habits, interest, video watching, and games—basically almost every information data brokers and businesses collect to build profiles of their customers' tastes.

The company is all set to roll out a new feature on Monday that will inform users who were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data leak.

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Microsoft Office 365 Gets Built-in Ransomware Protection and Enhanced Security Features

Microsoft Office 365 Gets Built-in Ransomware Protection and Enhanced Security Features 

Ransomware has been around for a few years, but it has become an albatross around everyone's neck, targeting big businesses, hospitals, financial institutions and individuals worldwide and extorting millions of dollars.

Last year, we saw some major ransomware outbreaks, including WannaCry and NotPetya, which wreaked havoc across the world, hitting hundreds of thousands of computers and business networks worldwide.

From small to mid-range businesses, Microsoft Office 365 remains the most widely used and fastest-growing work office suite, so it's no surprise that it has become a primary target for viruses, ransomware, and phishing scams.

In fact, most strains of ransomware target Microsoft productivity apps such as Word, Excel and encrypt sensitive data to hold the company hostage until the ransom is paid.

Now, to combat such cyber attacks, Microsoft has announced some new security features for Office 365 that can help users mitigate the damage done by ransomware and other malware infections.

The new features were initially introduced for OneDrive for Business, but that the company is now rolling them out to anyone who has signed up for an Office 365 Home or Personal subscription, Microsoft Office blogsays.

Here below I have briefed the list of new features:

File Recovery and Anti-Ransomware

• Files Restore—Microsoft Office 365 now allows users to restore entire OneDrive to a previous point in time within the last 30 days. This feature can be used to recover files from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or any catastrophic event.

• Ransomware detection & recovery—Office 365 had also introduced a new security feature that detects ransomware attacks and alerts you through an email, mobile, or desktop notification while helping you restore your OneDrive to a point before the malware compromised files.

Security and Privacy Features

Office 365 has added three new features to help keep your confidential or personal data (such as tax documents, family budgets, or a new business proposal) secure and private when sharing them online.

• Password protected sharing links—This feature allows you to set a password for your shared file and folders, preventing unauthorized access even if your recipient accidentally forwards protected documents to others.

• Email encryption—This feature allows users to send/receive end-to-end encrypted emails in Outlook over a secure connection, providing additional protection to minimize the threat of being intercepted.

• Prevent forwarding—Microsoft now enables you to restrict your email recipients from forwarding or copying emails you send to them from Outlook. Besides this, any MS Office document attached to your emails will remain encrypted even after downloading, so if the recipient shares your attachment with others, they will not be able to open it.

Advanced Protection from Viruses and Cybercrime

• Advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—Office 365 also offers built-in real-time web protection, which monitors every link you click in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and notifies you if it is suspicious.

File Recovery and Anti-Ransomware features began rolling out starting today and will be available to all Office 365 users soon, while features to help keep your information secure and private (including password protected sharing links, email encryption, and prevent forwarding) will start rolling out in the coming weeks.

Advanced link checking and advanced attachment scanning are already available in MS Outlook that protects you from previously unseen viruses and phishing scams in real-time. However, advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will roll out in the second half of 2018.

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Finland's 3rd Largest Data Breach Exposes 130,000 Users' Plaintext Passwords 

Over 130,000 Finnish citizens have had their credentials compromised in what appears to be third largest data breach ever faced by the country, local media reports.

Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) is warning users of a large-scale data breach in a website maintained by the New Business Center in Helsinki ("Helsingin Uusyrityskeskus"), a company that provides business advice to entrepreneurs and help them create right business plans.

Unknown attackers managed to hack the website (http://liiketoimintasuunnitelma.com) and stole over 130,000 users’ login usernames and passwords, which were stored on the site in plain-text without using any cryptographic hash.

Right after knowing of the breach on 3rd April, the company took down the affected website, which is currently showing "under maintenance" notice with a press release about the incident on its homepage.

"We are very sorry for all the people who have been subjected to crime and who may be affected by mental or financial disadvantages. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to know exactly how many people are and what information this information breaks. We have filed an offense report, and the parties do not need to report to the police separately," says Jarmo Hyökyvaara, Chairman of the Board of the New Business Center of Helsinki.

"The maintenance and security of our service was the responsibility of our subcontractor, our long-term partner. Unfortunately, the security of the service has not been enough to prevent this kind of attack. This is, in part, our mistake, and as a subscriber and owner of the service we are responsible for this."

The company also ensures that the detailed information of its customers was stored on a different system, which was not affected by the data breach.

The incident has been reported to the Helsinki police, who is currently investigating the case as a gross fraud.

As soon as the website returns, users who have an account with the affected website are strongly recommended to change their passwords.

Since the plain-text passwords have been exposed to hackers, it would be a great idea for users to change their passwords for any other website, in case they are using identical to the one used on this website.

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