Now Facebook hacked, Java used to hack the data

Photo courtesy arstechnica.com

After Twitter now its Facebook's turn to be hacked.  The season of hackings continues without a break with no end in sight.  Facebook on Friday said that it has been targeted by a series of attacks.  It said that the incident occurred when a few employees visited a mobile developer website.  

Though announced on Friday, it has been in the know that Facebook security has been in the radar of hackers for a long time now.  Twitter's hackings were a grim reminder of how vulnerable the social networking sites are.

Facebook has stated that, "we have found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised."  they have further added that,  “As soon as we discovered the presence of malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day,” 

Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said that Facebook’s internal security team worked with a third party to ‘sinkhole’ the attackers’ command server taking over the network traffic coming into it from systems infected by its malware. They discovered traffic coming from several other companies. Facebook duly notified those companies of the attack and has also informed law enforcement.  According to an Ars Technica report,  this attack was taking place simultaneously when websites of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Twitter were being attacked.

This hack is also a result of the Java security loop hole, about which I have already written in length in my blogs regarding java safety and hacking of a banking Executive's account.

The company has said that users visiting the Facebook with Java enabled on there websites are vulnerable to this attack.  I have already advised you to disable Java in your computers.    Further I request all readers to kindly refrain from divulging personal details like you mobile number, bank details etc. from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.  This is the only way you can be relatively safe from the attacks.

Kindly be advised and be secure.  Post your comments regarding this article.

Vijay Prabhu