Hacker Claims to Have Leaked 1.2 Billion Facebook User Records via API Exploit

A threat actor known as ByteBreaker has claimed to have scraped and compromised a database containing 1.2 billion Facebook user records by exploiting Facebooks API, now offering the data for sale on a dark web forum. The leaked information reportedly includes highly sensitive details such as full names, usernames, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, unique IDs, gender, and geographic locations. While some of the sample data appears to overlap with the 2021 Facebook data breach involving over 500 million users, the massive scale and alleged freshness of this leak point to a different or expanded data set. Meta, Facebooks parent company, has not issued a strong denial, merely reiterating that the data is not from a recent breach and that previous incidents have been addressed. This evolving incident highlights ongoing challenges with API security for large social media platforms and the increasing sophistication of threat actors targeting user data. It serves as a stark reminder of the persistent risks of data scraping and the importance of robust cybersecurity measures in protecting personal information in the digital age. The story remains developing as experts analyze the authenticity and scope of the breach.