KUALA LUMPUR – Over 11 million Malaysian Facebook users are purportedly part of the 500 million accounts leaked on an online hackers’ forum recently.
According to local technology portal Lowyat.net, records of the half a billion global Facebook users were leaked on a popular data marketplace forum, which previously listed databases from a Malaysian payment platform and e-commerce merchant, and sold the national electoral roll.
The number of local users, totalling 11,675,894, was revealed by Alon Gal, who is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Israeli cybersecurity company Hudson Rock.
Gal gave a breakdown of affected accounts according to countries in a tweet on January 14, which was retweeted on April 3.
Other than the Facebook IDs, he pointed out that users’ phone numbers, full names, locations, past locations, birthdays, relationship statuses, bios, and email addresses are also among details leaked.
“Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing,” he said in a tweet on April 3.
“All 533,000,000 Facebook records are just leaked for free.”
Facebook Strategic Response Communications director Liz Bourgeois, however, said the matter is an “old” security issue which the company has fixed in 2019, according to Lowyat.net.
But a Business Insider report found that the leaked accounts’ details are current based on data samples – such as emails and phone numbers – matched with known users.
The latest data leak involving the world’s largest social media platform of two billion users comes fresh on the heels of a Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw the namesake British consulting firm using the personal data of millions of Facebook users for targeted political ads.
In 2017, Lowyat.net founder Vijandren Ramadass uncovered a separate data leak of more than 46 million Malaysian mobile subscriptions, the sale of which was attempted on his forum.
According to a Reuters report, the data includes mobile phone and identification card numbers, as well as the home addresses and SIM card data of 46.2 million customers.
It also contained personal data from several medical associations and a job portal, which cybersecurity experts said exposed users to fraudulent activities by criminals. – The Vibes, April 5, 2021
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