It was found that personal information such as phone numbers of 500 million Facebook users were leaked.
Of these, it is estimated that there are 120,000 Korean users.
Economic media Business Insider and Reuters reported on the 3rd (local time) that personal information of more than 535 million Facebook users was disclosed virtually for free on a well-known hacking online bulletin board.
This personal information belongs to Facebook users in 106 countries around the world, and includes phone number, Facebook ID, name, place of residence, birthday, history, email address, and gender.
Alan Galle, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, said the database appears to be identical to the Facebook phone numbers that have been circulating among hackers since January this year.
A screenshot of the personal information sales site that Gal CTO released through his Twitter account on January 14th this year shows more than 44 million Egyptian users, 40 million Tunisia, 35 million Italy, 32 million US, and Saudi Arabia. Personal information of 28 million people in Arabia and 20 million people in France was leaked.
At the time, there was a posting on the site that it sold personal information of 121,000 Korean Facebook users.
Gal CTO warned that even if these data are years old, they could be useful to cybercriminals who use the leaked information to pretend to be someone else or steal login information.
He said that there is not much that Facebook can do in terms of security as the information has already been leaked, but that Facebook can alert users to beware of potential phishing or scams.
This is not the first time that Facebook leaked user personal information, so in 2016, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica collected data from 80 million Facebook users for political advertising, and it was revealed later that it became a big controversy. There is a bar.
(Photo = Getty Image Korea)