Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Phone Number Among Data of 533 Million Users Leaked Online
NCMP
April 6, 2021
On April 3, the personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries was leaked by hackers and the platform’s CEO’s information is among the leaked personal data. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number, location, name, date of birth, marriage information and Facebook user ID were among the stolen personal data published on a hacker forum on Saturday.
Cyber researcher Dave Walker confirmed that Facebook co-founders Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz’ personal details were also leaked with the data. On April 4, Walker tweeted, “Regarding the #FacebookLeak, of the 533M people in the leak – the irony is that Mark Zuckerberg is regrettably included in the leak as well.
The 533 million leaked databases from 106 countries include 32 million users from the US, 11 million users from the UK and 6 million users from India, whose details like phone numbers, full names, Facebook IDs, location, birthdays and email addresses have been posted for free online, reports Business Insider
According to media reports, a Facebook spokesperson said the data is from 2019 and they “found and fixed this issue in August 2019.”
Alon Gal, the co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, said this is the same database with phone numbers that have been circulating in hacker circles since January.
Vice had previously reported on how access to millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers was being sold using Bots. But on Saturday, the entire database was made available online for free and anyone with decent hacking skills could gain access to it. The data, despite being old, can be used by cybercriminals to scam people using their personal information, states Gal, who first discovered the leaked database.
He revealed that a database of this size could lead to “bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks or hacking attempts.”
“I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data,” tweeted Gal in January.
The data was verified by Gal by running the phone numbers of some people he knew and other journalists have also matched the phone numbers of people they know from the dump.
