Websites Hacked

By Angeles Oviedo

This past Friday, Facebook's security team announced via a blog post that hackers infiltrated their system last month, but did not steal users' personal information.

"It's scary to think that a social media platform that is mainly used to connect with friends and family could be used for crimeful purposes," said senior Sandy Ledesma.

According to the company's security team, the attack occurred when employees visited a compromised mobile advertising site. Despite running up-to-date anti-virus software, the intrusion affected their systems. Once the intrusion was discovered, the security team remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement and launched an investigation that is currently underway.

Facebook is not alone in the hacking incident. The recent intrusion of their systems is the latest in a series of reported hacks that continue to reveal the dangers of using online applications that store massive amounts of personal information and business data.

Earlier this month, Twitter reported being victim to hacking. In Twitter's case, hackers may have stolen usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 of the more than 200 million accounts set up on its service.

Last month, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both reported being attacked by hackers based in China.

These recent high-stake cyber threats have alarmed concern in Washington, D.C. Last week, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling for increased protection of American industries from cyber attacks. On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder held a news conference announcing the Obama administration's new plan to help U.S. companies protect themselves against intellectual property theft.

Although user information was not compromised in Facebook's recent hacking, concern over having personal information accessed by hackers still looms.

"I'm concerned about the possibility of someone accessing my pictures or information about where I'm from or my phone number despite the privacy settings I have in place," said senior Shanley Porter. "It's unsettling not knowing what that information could be used for if placed in the wrong hands."

The Facebook security team stated in the blog post announcing the intrusion that compromised systems received patches for the vulnerability by Feb. 1. The social media company did not explain why the team waited until the afternoon before a holiday weekend to inform its users about the hack, but explained that they were taking a proactive approach to prevent further attacks.

"As part of our ongoing investigation, we are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," Facebook's security team said.

Contact Angeles Oviedo at aoviedo@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.