Facebook says personal data of over 50 million users hacked, breach fixed

Facebook on Friday revealed that its computer network had been attacked by hackers that led to the exposure of personal data from nearly 50 million of its users. The company said that hackers had exploited its "View As" feature that allowed them access to the personal data of users.

The social media giant said that the breach was discovered earlier this week. In a statement, Facebook said that after noticing the breach, all the necessary steps were taken to fix the vulnerability.

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In order to deal with the issue, more than 90 million users were logged out of their Facebook accounts. The company said that it didn't know who was behind the attacks or where they were based. However, it alerted law enforcement authorities about the data breach.

If you've been logged out of your account and asked to sign back in, it’s because we've discovered a security issue and are taking immediate action to protect people on Facebook. Learn more https://t.co/XLcHGYFBu2

— Facebook (@facebook) September 28, 2018

The data breach came at a time when Facebook was staggering from the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The British analytics firm, which was allegedly linked with the US President Donald Trump, had illegally obtained personal data of nearly 89 million users.

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On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had told reporters that the company didn’t know yet if any of the accounts that were hacked were misused.

Facebook has a massive user base of over 2 billion people. Another two billion people separately use Facebook-owned WhatsApp, a messaging app, and Instagram, a photo-sharing app.