Facebook Confirms Data Breach and Massive Vulnerability

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hothardware.com - A self-proclaimed security enthusiast has exposed a major flaw in Facebook, one in which nearly every user's phone number can be used to view their personal information. His name is Suriya Prakash, and his method of cultivating numbers involves using Facebook's mobile site to bypass security limits imposed on the social networking site's regular portal, or so he claims. Here's how he explains it.

"About a month ago I was just browsing Facebook on my Facebook mobile application and it had an option called 'Find friends using contacts' -- what it does is that it compares the contact list from your phone to the Facebook database to see if you have any friends that are in your contacts but not on your Facebook account," Prakash told The Next Web. "I also later figured out that simply 'searching' a person's phone number (including country code) will show you their account."

Using Prakash's method, a person could search a random phone number to view someone's full profile, and it works nearly every time since, according to Prakash, Facebook's privacy settings are confusing so most people haven't adequately protected themselves. That in and of itself isn't too egregious, but the fact that Prakash claimed he was able to write a script to cultivate a massive phone book of everyone who lets you look them up on Facebook is the scary part.

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