Leaker of 178m Facebook profiles facing massive lawsuit

Facebook is suing a Ukrainian national for violating the terms of service of its social network after he allegedly harvested the data of 178m users and oversubscribed it online along a popular hacking forum.

Reported to a new ailment providing further details on the lawsuit, Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko created millions of virtual Android devices that to each one had a different phone list and used them to deliver machine-controlled requests to the social media giant's systems using its Messenger app.

Betwixt January of 2022 and September of 2022, Solonchenko leveraged Facebook Messenger's Contact Importer feature to build a database of Facebook user IDs and phone numbers.

Although Facebook interrupted Striking Importer after it was victimised to leak the phone numbers of 533m users in a separate incident, piece in operation the boast allowed users to sync the contacts from their phone with the social network. This allowed them to chat with their existing contacts ended Messenger instead of having to trust on SMS to do so.

Phone number enumeration

Subsequently victimization speech sound number enumeration to put in collaboration his database of publically comprehendible Facebook user IDs and phone numbers, Solonchenko then allegedly time-tested to sell it on the popular hacking form RaidForums under the usernames "Solomane" and "Barak-Obama".

Yet, Facebook user IDs and passwords weren't the only purloined data Solonchenko tried to sell online atomic number 3 he also utilized RaidForums to deal data from a Ukrainian bank and private delivery service as well every bit a French data analytics accompany.

In its lawsuit, Facebook argues that since Solonchenko had at to the lowest degree two Facebook accounts, two Facebook apps and a Facebook page to boot to 5 Instagram accounts, helium must have agreed to the company's Terms of Service at or s point. The fellowship's damage strictly prohibit collecting data from its products using automated means as well equally selling OR making data from its weapons platform available without written go for.

Facebook is now asking the US District Court of the Circumboreal District of CA to forbid Solonchenko from accessing its sites and selling information from them though the company has also requested defrayment for unspecified damages. Thankfully for users of the ethnic network, the company enclose a set of improvements binding in September of 2022 that made it much more difficult for scrapers to lawlessly collect data from its products which leave in all likelihood aid prevent them from dropping victim to identity thievery.

Via The Register