Profile of More Than 267 Million Facebook Accounts for Sale

According to analysis by Bob Diachenko and colleagues, the majority of the 267 million account records that are being sold illegally belong to users in the US. Although passwords are not included, almost all leaks contain information that could allow malicious agents to be used as "materials" to launch phishing attacks. or SMS to steal login information as well as other valuable personal data.

After the repository containing 267 million records was discovered, the Bob Diachenko team also discovered a second server containing the same data of 42 million other Facebook user profiles was also put up for sale, but quickly. hacked by an unknown hacker group, forcing the owner of this data warehouse to remove the entire post.

Currently, the investigation to identify the owner behind this huge leaked data warehouse is still underway. However, according to security experts, the behind the deal is most likely a criminal organization specializing in stealing data through the abuse of Facebook API before it is locked or through combat. The technique of using bots collects information directly from the user's public profile.

The question is how harmful the personal information disclosed in this repository could be to the victim. As mentioned, although the password is not included, the leaked database contains quite a lot of other personal information such as name, date of birth, email address and even a mobile phone number. This information can be used by cyber criminals to scam and spam in the form of personal messages and emails. If the phishing emails contain authentic information such as birthdays or phone numbers, it is easy for some unattended users to believe that the email is real and provide the attacker with the requested information, or click the malicious link attached in the fake email.

Security experts recommend that users tighten their Facebook account privacy settings, as well as be wary of emails and text messages sent from unauthenticated sources.