Facebook has found a security “issue” in its “View As” feature that led to an attack on almost 50 million accounts and potentially affecting as many as 90 million users in total, the social media giant announced Friday. If your account was impacted it means that a hacker could have accessed any account that you log into using Facebook.
“Attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted ‘View As,’ a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people’s accounts,” Facebook’s vice president of product management Guy Rosen wrote in an emailed statement.
“Access tokens are the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they don’t need to re-enter their password every time they use the app,” he added.
The profile information exposed in the “View As” profile feature includes a user’s name, gender and hometown. Continue Reading