Facebook profile details of over 267 million users stolen and sold on the dark web: Report

Facebook has often been criticised for the way it handles user information and for the security measures it takes to protect user data. Once, again, much to the users’ horror, Facebook profile data of over 267 million users has been stolen and is reportedly being sold on the dark web. Comparitech, along with security researcher Bob Diachenko, uncovered the trove of Facebook data stored on an Elasticsearch cluster. Per the report, the researcher believes that “the trove of data is most likely the result of an illegal scraping operation or Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam”. [caption id=“attachment_7881121” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”]  Representational Image.[/caption] The stolen data of 267 million Facebook account was reportedly posted on hacker forums as downloadable material. And to add to that, according to a report by cyber-security intelligence firm Cyble, the stolen data was also put up on the dark Web for sale for a sum of EUR 500, which is about Rs 41,000 per today’s exchange rate. (Also read:  Google detects 18 million Coronavirus outbreak-related malware, phishing Gmail messages per day: How to stay safe ) Researchers at Cyble also purchased the data off the dark web to verify, and found that cache did contain sensitive user information including email, phone number, Facebook ID, last connection, status, and age. It did not contain passwords or any information used for authentication. However, the available data is enough to send users phishing or spamming attacks. Facebook is yet to comment on the data breach. Meanwhile, Cyble has added details of the affected Facebook profile accounts to  Amibreached.com, where you can check if your account was compromised.