February 18, 2013

Facebook hacked in Zero-Day Attack

Facebook hacked in Zero-Day Attack

Facebook hacked in Zero-Day Attack

Facebook operator of the largest social network with more than 1 billion members, said on Friday it had been the target of an unidentified hacker group, but that no user information was compromised during the attack.

The attack occurred when a handful of the company's employees visited a developer's compromised website, which led to malware being installed on their laptops.

‘Last month, Facebook Security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack,’ read the statement, despite the laptops being ‘fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software.’

Reports say Facebook knew about the attacks, which likely exploited a zero-day Java software flaw, well before the announcement.

"We are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," Facebook said on its website.

Facebook was not alone in this attack, Twitter social network, said earlier this month that it had been hacked, and that approximately 2,50,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.