Large-scale data theft perpetrated by hackers has been common in recent years, with Facebook being one of the companies affected, as they contain a lot of enticing information. But Facebook intends to put the brakes on this and, at the very least, put down any hacker who wants to do the same.
According to the The Register, Facebook has just started a court case accusing Ukrainian programmer Alexander Solonchenko of allegedly stealing data from more than 178 million users through Messenger. According to the indictment, Solonchenko has used a flaw in the Messenger contacts import system to automatically obtain millions of phone data using an Android device.
According to the information disclosed, the automatic tool created by Solonchenko made it possible to automatically generate telephone numbers that were then associated with existing Messenger profiles, and whenever the social network sends a positive result, the programmer collected the user’s personal data.
This process took place between January 2018 and September 2019, and in December 2020 the data were offered for sale on the black market. This will not have been the only attack carried out by the programmer, as Facebook reports another similar attack on a large Ukrainian bank.
Facebook has thus decided to sue the developer for the inestimable and irreparable damage caused to the company, and it is believed that the main objective is not even to obtain huge compensation from the developer. The main objective will be to demonstrate to the hacker community that their acts and respective sales of data could bring them troubles, if discovered, but this is the objective, which is to deter future hacker attacks, both to your social network and to others.
In the indictment, Facebook states that Solonchenko found a buyer for the data obtained through Messenger in May 2021, and The Register also states that this security flaw was also exploited by another group of hackers, who obtained 533 million data. .
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