A recent report from a security researcher at Imperva has landed Facebook in hot water yet again, with experts claiming that a flaw in the social media giant’s security exposes the personal preferences and information of users. According to researcher Ron Masas at Imperva, the glitch renders the world’s most popular social media platform particularly vulnerable to cross-site request forgery attacks, which could be used by malicious third parties to steal sensitive profile information from hapless users.
The greatest vulnerability in Facebook’s system, according to the researchers in question, is that it enables third parties to potentially view what users have “liked” when browsing the social media platform. After users visit a website hosting malicious malware, their Facebook accounts become vulnerable. Attackers can then open a pop-up browser or a new tab, and begin vacuuming up the sensitive personal information that most users think remains private.
Imperva’s report notes that the vulnerability has been patched, but the private information of users and their friends could still have been exposed in the meantime it took to fix the problem after it had been publicly identified. Security expert Ron Masas noted in his blog post where he revealed the issue that Google’s Chrome web browser in particular was vulnerable to the malicious sites that made accounts open to hackers.
Mobile users of Facebook’s platform using Dallas SEO services are noted to have been particularly vulnerable to the glitch, given that many of them likely had Facebook open and forgotten about in a myriad of tabs.
The glitch is the latest in a long line of scandals that’s beset Facebook in recent years, with the company’s famous CEO Mark Zuckerberg having notably appeared before Congress to answer the questions of unhappy lawmakers last year. The New York Times also recently released a report detailing the way that senior executives at the company deliberately stymied investigations into Facebook’s mishandling of election interference during the 2016 presidential election.
Political allies of the behemoth tech company in Washington recently helped bail it out of the PR crisis it found itself in, the Times report notes. Consumers, too, have been protesting and igniting #CancelFacebook movements.
The continued scandals that Facebook has faced in the past few years has significantly damaged its public image. According to a recent survey carried out by Jebbit, Facebook scored the lowest ranking when consumers were asked which companies and brands they trusted most with their data, according to Adweek.
