Facebook Asked by India to Provide an Update on the Latest Hack

Facebook is currently in a tough spot as the Information and Technology Ministry has asked the social networking company to give an ‘update’ on how many Indian users are affected by the latest hack happened on the portal. According to the information available, Facebook confirmed that about 50 million accounts were hacked on the portal by hackers stealing the digital keys of user accounts. A couple of Senior IT officials, who did not wish to be named said Facebook has been verbally asked to update the government on the number of Indian users impacted by the recent attack. This news is reported by PTI.

• Make Telecom Talk My Trusted Source
• 
• 

They added that Facebook officials have said they were analysing the issue and will revert in two days. When contacted, Facebook declined to comment on the query.

Last week, Facebook had said hackers had exploited a vulnerability in its system, impacting up to 50 million accounts. The US-based firm did not disclose country-specific impact. Facebook, which has over 200 million users in India, counts the country among its largest userbases globally.

Mark Zuckerberg, in a press call, had said the company’s engineering team, on September 25, found an attack affecting up to 50 million accounts on Facebook. “The attackers exploited a vulnerability in the code of the ‘View As’ feature which is a privacy feature that lets people see what their Facebook profile would look like to another person,” he added.

He noted that since the investigation is still early, Facebook hasn’t yet been able to determine if there’s specific targeting. Stating that hackers had tried to access profile information fields- like name, gender and hometown, Zuckerberg said: “we do not yet know if any private information was accessed that way”.