A hacker attack on Facebook databases has subtracted the data of 533 million profiles, of which over 35 million are Italian accounts: what happens now
The data of a total of 533 million Facebook profiles are for sale in the meanders of the web, and of these over 35 million are Italian accounts. The attack on the social network has allowed hackers to create a database with all the stolen data, which comes from 108 countries around the world, including Italy.
The data theft was reported by Israeli security researcher Alon Gal, who identified the database and reported the incident on his Twitter profile "Under the Breach". According to Gal's reconstruction, a vulnerability in the Facebook social network allowed hackers to steal personal account data such as name, phone, email and other sensitive information, such as job position. Among the Italian profiles for sale are also those of important people such as lawyers, journalists, managers and even the account of the mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi.
Facebook, millions of profiles for sale with Telegram bot
The Israeli researcher discovered that the hundreds of millions of profiles stolen from Facebook were for sale through a paid Telegram bot as early as early 2020. The bot was able to trace phone numbers linked to social profiles and from the Facebook ID get all sensitive data.
In particular, hackers accessed first and last name, phone number, information about romantic relationships, job position, city of origin and the one where you live, membership in Facebook groups and email. After discovering the bot, Telegram took steps to ban it, but in the meantime, users' sensitive information had been downloaded from the database and sold to the highest bidder. Even if the database is no longer available on Telegram, cyber criminals can find other ways to sell the data, for example in the meanders of the deep web.
Facebook, Italian accounts stolen: what happens now
Facebook's data theft has affected 108 countries around the world on all continents, with 5 million Dutch victims, 3 million Palestinians, over 8 million Brazilians and most importantly 35,677,338 Italian accounts. Among these, there are profiles of people such as financial advisors, lawyers, journalists, managers of publishing groups such as Rai, RCS and Gedi. Even the profiles of many politicians, including the mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi, have ended up in the hands of cyber criminals.
Those who have acquired that data could use it for the most disparate purposes, such as creating fake Facebook profiles to pull off scams. Or, they could use it to blackmail the owners of the stolen profiles and extort money. Or they could use email and phone numbers to access their victims' accounts, since the latter is now used to authenticate on social networks, but also to use home banking services via apps or to confirm online purchases.