Social media giant Facebook may reportedly face a USD 1.63 billion fine in the European Union after it disclosed of a massive hack on Friday in which attackers bypassed security measures and obtained access tokens to a minimum of 50 million accounts.
As per trusted sources, Facebook had begun notifying users about the breach over the weekend by posting a notice at the top of feeds labelled as ‘An Important Security Update’ consisting of the similar report sent to the media.
Potentially giving exclusive control of both profiles and linked apps, the bug reportedly exploited flaws in the platform’s video uploader and “View As” feature to gain access to the accounts. The hack forced Facebook to reset access tokens for about 50 million accounts and reset another 40 million as a precautionary measure, cite sources.
Facebook is yet to comment on whether the hackers attempted to extract data from the affected accounts. Guy Rosen, Vice President of Product Management at Facebook, was reportedly quoted stating that the firm was unable to determine the extent to which third party applications could have been compromised. Rosen further added that attackers did make an effort to harvest private information from the systems of Facebook.
Sources familiar with the development claim that the attack was highly sophisticated, and the response of Facebook is in early stages as of now. According to The Economic Times, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus Senator Mark R. Warner has called for a full probe into the incident and stated that it was high time the Congress initiates action to secure the privacy of social media users.
Reportedly, the data breach might trigger highest fines possible, which is four percent of a firm’s global revenue for the prior year, under the newly enacted General Data Privacy Regulation of Europe.