Korea also robbed 120,000 people, over 500 million people leaked Facebook personal information

It was revealed that about 533 million personal information was leaked from Facebook, the world’s largest social network service (SNS). Among them, personal information of about 120,000 Korean users was included.

The US economic media Business Insider and Reuters reported on the 3rd (local time) that the personal information of more than 535 million Facebook users from 106 countries around the world was released on a website related to hacking abroad. The leaked personal information included Facebook users’ phone numbers, Facebook ID, name, residence, birthday, account creation date, history (education, work experience, etc.), and e-mail addresses.

Business Insider explained that some of the leaked personal information was verified by matching the phone number and e-mail address of a publicly disclosed Facebook user. Reuters added that he tried to contact the victim of personal information leakage through Telegram, a messaging app, but failed.

In this regard, Alan Gall, founder and chief technology officer of Hudson Rock, an Israeli cybercrime intelligence company, said through Twitter that it appears to be the same data as Facebook-related phone numbers that have been circulating among hackers since January. On the famous hacking information site that shares beginner-level hacking technology, an automatic advertisement was released saying that Facebook personal information was sold for only a few euros in January. Personal information distributed free of charge on the day and individuals provided by the hacking information site at the time The information is the same.

According to the data released by Gal CTO on Twitter, the damage of personal information leakage was the most, with 3,231,5282 users in the United States. In Europe, the damage was large in France (1984,8559 people), the UK (11522328 people), and Germany (645,4423 people). In Asia, India was the most outflow with 6.62,450 people. Although it was relatively small, the damage from spills from China (67,334 people) and Japan (42,8625 people) was also significant. The outflow of Korean users also reached 12,1744.

In response, Facebook said that the leaked data was “only very old” and that it was “related to a security vulnerability that was fixed in August 2019.”

However, Gal CTO warned that even years old data could be misused. “The malicious people will definitely use this level of data for’social engineering attacks’ or hacking attempts such as fraud and illegal marketing,” he said. “So far, Facebook has admitted the absolute negligence of such information leakage. I haven’t seen them do,” he criticized.

A social engineering attack is a hacking method that targets an individual’s emotional, cognitive or psychological state through personal information. Phishing to request money or personal information from individuals by impersonating acquaintances, public institutions, and companies, and smishing, which spread malicious codes by sending links in SMS messages, are typical.

This is not the first time Facebook has leaked personal information. Ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2016, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytika collected data from 80 million Facebook users for political advertisements, but it was revealed later, causing great controversy. At the time, Facebook promised to crack down on large-scale data collection activities.

“There is not much that Facebook can do in terms of security as the information has already been leaked,” said Gal CTO. “Facebook can notify users to be careful not to be scammed, such as potential phishing,” he said.

Reporter Seungho Lee [email protected]