Security News

Phishers take aim at Facebook page owners
2022-09-14 09:56

Phishers are looking to trick owners of Facebook pages with fake notices from the social network, in an attempt to get them to part with sensitive information. Such a link makes it less likely that email security solutions will flag the email as potentially malicious, and can also give a false sense of security to the potential targets, as the email ostensibly came from Facebook and contains a link to a page hosted on Facebook.

Meta disbands Responsible Innovation team, spreads it out over Facebook and co
2022-09-09 17:28

Facebook parent Meta has disbanded its Responsible Innovation Team that it claimed last year was a central part of efforts to "Proactively surface and address potential harms to society in all that we build." The RIT previously included two dozen engineers, ethicists and other Meta employees who were responsible for identifying and addressing concerns with products and updates to Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook Has No Idea What Data It Has
2022-09-08 15:14

Facebook's stonewalling has been revealing on its own, providing variations on the same theme: It has amassed so much data on so many billions of people and organized it so confusingly that full transparency is impossible on a technical level. In the March 2022 hearing, Zarashaw and Steven Elia, a software engineering manager, described Facebook as a data-processing apparatus so complex that it defies understanding from within.

Novant Health admits leak of 1.3m patients' info to Facebook
2022-08-22 22:00

Novant Health confirmed that it may have disclosed 1.3 million patients' sensitive data, including email addresses, phone numbers, financial information - even doctor's appointment details - to Meta. Novant finally copped to sending letters to "Some of its patients following possible disclosure of protected health information resulting from an incorrect configuration of a pixel, an online tracking tool," in a statement released late on Friday.

Facebook Testing Default End-to-End Encryption and Encrypted Backups in Messenger
2022-08-13 05:23

Social media company Meta said it will begin testing end-to-end encryption on its Messenger platform this week for select users as the default option, as the company continues to slowly add security layers to its various chat services. "If you're in the test group, some of your most frequent chats may be automatically end-to-end encrypted, which means you won't have to opt in to the feature," Sara Su, product management director of Messenger Trust, said.

Facebook’s In-app Browser on iOS Tracks ‘Anything You Do on Any Website’
2022-08-12 13:24

Users of Apple's Instagram and Facebook iOS apps are being warned that both use an in-app browser that allows parent company Meta to track 'every single tap' users make with external websites accessed via the software. iOS users' concerns over tracking were addressed by Apple's 2021 release of iOS 14.5 and a feature called App Tracking Transparency.

Meta Cracks Down on Cyber Espionage Operations in South Asia Abusing Facebook
2022-08-08 13:03

Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it took action against two espionage operations in South Asia that leveraged its social media platforms to distribute malware to potential targets. The first set of activities is what the company described as "Persistent and well-resourced" and undertaken by a hacking group tracked under the moniker Bitter APT targeting individuals in New Zealand, India, Pakistan and the U.K. "Bitter used various malicious tactics to target people online with social engineering and infect their devices with malware," Meta said in its Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report.

Facebook finds new Android malware used by APT hackers
2022-08-05 14:40

Meta has released its Q2 2022 adversarial threat report, and among the highlights is the discovery of two cyber-espionage clusters connected to hacker groups known as 'Bitter APT' and APT36 using new Android malware. These cyberspying operatives use social media platforms like Facebook to collect intelligence or to befriend victims using fake personas and then drag them to external platforms to download malware.

Facebook ads push Android adware with 7 million installs on Google Play
2022-07-30 15:14

Several adware apps promoted aggressively on Facebook as system cleaners and optimizers for Android devices are counting millions of installations on Google Play store. To evade deletion, the apps hide on the victim's device by constantly changing icons and names, masquerading as Settings or the Play Store itself.

Adware cleaner apps promoted on Facebook sneaked into the Play Store
2022-07-30 15:14

Several adware apps promoted aggressively on Facebook as system cleaners and optimizers for Android devices are counting millions of installations on Google Play store. To evade deletion, the apps hide on the victim's device by constantly changing icons and names, masquerading as Settings or the Play Store itself.