Spammers, not nation-state hackers, may have been behind the hack at Facebook last month that stole access to 30 million accounts.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company's internal investigators suspect the attackers are a group of Facebook and Instagram spammers who previously posed as a digital marketing company. Their goal was to make money through deceptive ads as opposed to conducting cyber warfare.
Facebook isn't denying the Journal's report, but has remained mum on who pulled off the attack, citing the FBI's involvement in the case. "The FBI is actively investigating and have asked us not to discuss who may be behind this attack," VP Guy Rosen told journalists last week.
If spammers were indeed behind the breach, then their likely aim was to collect your contact details to send out advertisements. Last week, Facebook disclosed that the mysterious attackers were focused on accessing the contact information from close to 30 million users affected in the attack.
To breach Facebook, the attackers exploited three vulnerabilities to steal users' digital access tokens, which would allow them to take over someone's account.
From Sept. 14 to about Sept. 27, the hackers used an automated process to essentially scrap the data from one person's account to the next. Among the details accessed were name, phone numbers and email addresses. Another 14 million users had details pertaining to their location, education, work and most recent searches on Facebook accessed during the hack.
Getting deceptive ads may sound harmless, but bad actors could choose to exploit the stolen data for identity theft purposes, email account takeovers, or phishing schemes. Imagine your email inbox or smartphone getting bombarded with messages that redirect you to download malware. Whoever stole the data could also decide to share it with other parties.
You can find out if you were affected in the Facebook hack by visiting the company's Help Center. The company is advising users to be wary of unwanted phone calls, text messages, and emails from people you don't know. "If you get a message or email claiming to be from Facebook. you can always review recent security emails to confirm if it's legitimate," the company added.