Hacks

More than six years after Facebook launched its ambitious  Free Basics  program to bring the Internet to the masses, the social network is back at it again with a new zero-rating initiative called  Discover . The service, available as a mobile web and Android app, allows users to browse the Internet using free daily data caps. Facebook Discover is currently being tested in Peru in partnership with local telecom companies such as Bitel, Claro, Entel, and Movistar. Unlike the regular rich-content browsing, Facebook's latest connectivity project only provides low-bandwidth text-only based browsing, meaning other forms of data-intensive content such as audio and video are not supported. Another key differentiator is that it treats all websites equally, whereas users of Free Basics are limited to a handful of sites that are  submitted by developers  and meet  technical criteria  set by Facebook. The move, ultimately, drew  criticism  for viola...

NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio Claim that Facebook tried to buy a Pegasus Spyware to monitor better their users especially access to the Apple user’s data and their activities. Pegasus is a powerful commercial spyware developed by Israel based spyware maker NSO group, also known as Q cyber technologies. The company claimed that they sell its spyware only government and law enforcement agencies for tracking criminals and terrorists, but it alleged that their technology also used to target the individual users around the world Oct 2019, Facebook  filed a lawsuit  against the NSO group in the U.S district count in northern direct of California for hacking its WhatsApp messenger by exploiting the zero-day vulnerability using Pegasus to steal the WhatsApp users data. Now, the Defendant of this case, NSO group or Q cyber technologies CEO and the major shareholder of the company  Shalev Hulio  declared that two Facebook representatives approached to NSO group t...

Following its efforts to take legal action against those misusing its social media platform, Facebook has now filed a new lawsuit against a Hong Kong-based advertising company and two Chinese individuals for allegedly abusing its ad platform to distribute malware and Ad fraud. Facebook filed the lawsuit on Thursday in the Northern District of California against ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd. as well as a Chinese software developer and a marketing director working for the firm, Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao. All three defendants have been alleged to have deceived people into installing malware on their systems, enabling them to compromise user's Facebook accounts and then using those hacked accounts to advertise counterfeit goods and diet pills—which is clearly in violation of Facebook's Terms and Advertising Policies. "The suit seeks to hold accountable ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd. and Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao for creating the malware, tri...

If you don’t automatically back up your photos on Google Photos just yet, you will now have an extra tool in your arsenal. Facebook has just announced that soon you will be able to backup your photos uploaded on the social network to your Google Photos account. This is part of their goal to bring data portability (that is hopefully secure) to their users through the Data Transfer Project involving other major technology brands like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc. Of course, you could always download your information, including photos, from Facebook any time you want. But now they want to give you the option to back them up on other platforms that are not theirs. This tool is just the first of many that they plan to introduce through the aforementioned Data Transfer Project that they have been working on together with the other tech brands. We might soon see that you could also back them up on Apple’s Photos or Microsoft’s OneDrive, etc. The  Google Photos backup t...

Two third-party software development kits integrated by over hundreds of thousands of Android apps have been caught holding unauthorized access to users' data associated with their connected social media accounts. In a  blog post  published a week before, Twitter revealed that an SDK developed by  OneAudience  contains a privacy-violating component which may have passed some of its users' personal data to the OneAudience servers. Following Twitter's disclosure, Facebook today released a statement revealing that an SDK from another company,  Mobiburn , is also under investigation for a similar malicious activity that might have exposed its users connected with certain Android apps to data collection firms. Both OneAudience and Mobiburn are data monetization services that pay developers to integrate their SDKs into the apps, which then collect users' behavioral data and then use it with advertisers for targeted marketing. In general, third-party software dev...

Facebook today revealed yet another security incident admitting that roughly 100 app developers may have improperly accessed its users' data in certain Facebook groups, including their names and profile pictures. In a  blog post  published Tuesday, Facebook said the app developers that unauthorizedly access this information were primarily social media management and video streaming apps that let group admins manage their groups more effectively and help members share videos to the groups, respectively. For those unaware, Facebook made some changes to its Group API in April 2018, a month after the revelation of the  Cambridge Analytica scandal , limiting apps integrated with a group to only access information, like the group's name, the number of members and the posts' content. To get access to additional information like names and profile pictures of members in connection with group activities, group members had to opt-in. However, it seems like Facebook once again...