New safety margin in the case of Facebook: The Online social network has admitted to having the passwords of hundreds of millions of users in unencrypted Form on internal servers. The passwords are “never” invisible been and that there was “so far” no indication that employees had abused, the company said on Thursday. Are affected users of the services Facebook, Facebook Lite, and Instagram.
The “Problem” that had been recently during a routine check discovered, had in the meantime been corrected, wrote the security and privacy competent Facebook-Vice-President Pedro Canahuati in a blog entry. The Affected – hundreds of millions of users of the App Facebook Lite, million other Facebook customers as well as tens of thousands of users of the photo platform Instagram would be informed. It was a precautionary measure.
That 20,000 employees had access to passwords,
, According to cyber security specialist website cancer onsecurity probably more than 20,000 Facebook-employees for several years to access the clear-text stored passwords, which should be in encrypted Form on the servers are stored. Up to 600 million users were affected, reported the Website citing internal Facebook sources.
Facebook has been shaken in the past year by a series of scandals. Among others, came out that the data of some 87 million users, a data analysis company Cambridge Analytica had landed. They have been used illegally in the last US presidential campaign, for the campaign of current incumbent Donald Trump.
In the autumn, had exploited a Hacker, a security vulnerability in Facebook in order to gain access to 29 million user accounts. At 14 million people, the attackers were able to view according to the company, including personal data, posted on Facebook – such as gender, relationship status, place of residence, date of birth, or recently visited places.
fin / AFP
