Posted on March 11, 2019 at 4:02 PM
Facebook Data Leaked! Ukrainian Hackers Facing Charges for Using Malware Plugins
Two Ukrainian hackers known as Gleb Sulchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov are facing trial for injecting advertisements into Facebook News Feed with quizzes.
Facebook on Friday filed a lawsuit against two notorious Ukrainians for compromising the accounts of over 60,000 users of their website. According to Daily Beast reports last Friday, the popular social media giant accused the hackers of violating the federal and California anti-hacking laws with their shameless act. As a result, Facebook sued them for violating their terms of service by illegally hacking the accounts of its users for unauthorized advertisements.
The incident report
On how these men could access user’s accounts, the complaint stated that they trickily caused the victims to install browser extensions infected with malware. These browser plugins offered personality quizzes to users on installation. However, once they installed the extensions, it redirected the user’s friend’s lists and profile data to the hackers’ offshore servers. Also, according to the suit, these men targeted more of Ukrainian and Russian Facebook users in their attack. They allegedly used four web applications of which two; FQuiz and Supertest were used to attack Facebook.
Facebook reactions on compromised accounts
From what the company wrote, apart from compromising their details on Facebook, the users also compromised their web browsers. By installing the app on their browsers, whenever they visit any social networking website, it will inject advertisements without their permission.
Also, Facebook stated that the act had caused them serious reputational damage. Apart from the sixty-three thousand Facebook accounts, the company is also facing more than $75,000 worth of damages. This amount according to the civil complaint was what Facebook spent in removing the malicious plugins from its website last year.
They also revealed that the defendants; Gleb Sulchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov are working with another company called “Web Sun Group.”
Recalling BBC report last year
Facebook recalled that it announced that some user’s accounts had been compromised on October 31st, 2018. This announcement made by the company came at the same time when a report on the BBC revealed that there had been a breach on people’s private messages on the website. We can recall that the BBC had questioned their measures in handling such unauthorized breach.
As at that time, the company blamed the malicious browser plugins for the sales of private messages. Also, the hackers claimed of having scraped data from 120 million accounts on Facebook. However, Facebook refused to give an immediate response as to whether Gleb Sulchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov were the culprits then.
From the implications of the lawsuit, Facebook may have allowed these hackers into their network by approving them as developers. The company allowed them to use their Login feature through which they opened fake accounts using pseudonyms.
Speaking about the breach and the future of the social networking site, the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg outlined the company’s plans to be more privacy-conscious. He promised to achieve a world that will protect people’s information more. According to him, people should have the confidence to live their lives freely and peak privately without fear of being compromised.
Last week also, the company also filed a lawsuit against four Chinese-owned companies for selling fake accounts & user engagement. The defendant may not face serious consequences, but it will give Facebook the leverage to defend itself.
