News
Personal Information Of 533 Million Facebook Users Leaked Online
It seems that Facebook’s data privacy issues won’t ever end. Security researcher Alon Gal has recently revealed that the personal information belonging to around 533 million Facebook users has been leaked online.
The massive dataset is currently being shared on various underground hacking forums for free, and it affects users from 106 countries including every country in the MENA region. At 32 million records, US Facebook users represent the greatest chunk of the dataset, followed by 11 million users from the UK, and 6 million users from India.
Besides user’s full names, the leak includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, locations, birthdates, bios, and sometimes even email addresses.
“So what’s the impact? For a targeted attack where you know someone’s name and country, it’s great for mobile phone lookup,” explains Troy Hunt, the creator of the Have I Been Pwned database. “But for spam based on using phone number alone, it’s gold. Not just SMS, there are heaps of services that just require a phone number these days, and now there’s hundreds of millions of them conveniently categorized by country with nice mail merge fields like name and gender.”
Twitter: @UnderTheBreach
The stolen information actually comes from 2019, and cybercriminals had access to it for quite some time now through a Telegram bot, which makes it possible to look up a phone number and receive the corresponding user’s Facebook ID, and the other way around — all for a small fee.
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“This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019,” said Liz Bourgeois, Facebook’s director of strategic response communications, in a Saturday tweet.
Old or not, the fact that the personal information of half a billion Facebook users is circulating around on the internet for free is the least the social media giant and its users need right now considering the number of new cybersecurity threats created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hopefully, Facebook will take the steps necessary to minimize the impact of the breach and protect its users.
To find out whether or not your Facebook account data was among the leak, go to HaveIBeenPwned.com and enter the email address you use to login to Facebook with. If your email address is detected within the millions of accounts, HaveIBeenPwned will let you know.
News
Lebanon Ministers Meet Visa Over National Digital Payment Platform
Finance and technology ministers say a comparative study and roadmap will follow before any decision on adopting a model.
Lebanon’s finance and technology ministers met representatives from Visa last week to discuss a proposed unified national digital payment platform for government services, according to a readout from the Ministry of Finance.
The meeting brought together Finance Minister Yassin Jaber, Minister of State for Technology and Artificial Intelligence Kamal Shehadeh, a Visa delegation, and experts from both ministries. Discussion focused on whether Lebanon could establish a single platform through which citizens and institutions would pay taxes, fees, fines and other official transactions electronically, using mobile phones and other digital channels.
The Visa delegation presented examples from countries that have adopted unified government payment platforms, including the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Estonia and Jordan. According to the readout, the examples were presented as having increased collection rates and expanded financial inclusion.
Talks covered settlement mechanisms, direct transfer to the treasury account, financial reconciliation, risk management, cybersecurity, fees, and an operational model that would involve the private sector. The parties agreed to continue technical and institutional consultations, prepare a comparative study, and develop an implementation roadmap before any decision on adopting a model for Lebanon.
Jaber said the Ministry of Finance had already enabled citizens to pay using credit cards and e-wallets through transfer companies, but described the proposed platform as a further step. He framed the development of electronic payment and collection systems as a priority within the ministry’s modernization plan.
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Shehadeh outlined the citizen-facing concept as a single mobile application through which users could settle obligations to ministries, government institutions and other bodies.
“The idea, in short, is that any citizen downloads an application on their mobile phone, through which they can pay all service obligations for all ministries, government institutions, or those owned by the Lebanese state, and others as well, as the platform is not limited only to state institutions,” he said.
Shehadeh added that the platform would not displace banks and money transfer companies that currently provide collection services to the state, calling it complementary to their work.
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