Facebook vs. Vietnamese Cyber Criminals – Knowledge Scrapping and Associated Risks

Security Detectives’ Safety researchers found an open Elasticsearch server with
scraped information related to 12 million Facebook users in Vietnam.

This incident has raised considerations over the corporate safety measures of tech-giants like Facebook. The volume of the leaked information is as high as 3GB is alarming.
According to the Security Safety researchers, the uncovered private information includes full title, e-mail deal, Facebook username and ID, delivery dates, their hometown, present location, GPS coordinates, their profile scores, household relations from different Fb customers, and much more. Though, to control the controversy, Facebook has taken down the leaked server after researchers reported the significant breach.
“The info that our analysis discovered is on prime of what was already discovered and provides one other 12 million data to the record. Many, however not all, of the entries included full particulars of personally figuring out info (PII), stemming from a number of sources – Fb included. We nonetheless have no idea who’s finally accountable for this scrape and the way they had been in a position to carry out such an intensive and invasive motion,” the researchers confirmed in their statement.

Scraped Knowledge

Knowledge scraping has become a very popular technique to extract customers’ private
information from different websites. It’s frequently observed that third-party distributors,
enterprise intelligence analysts, internet builders, and genuine enterprises are scraping out
customers’ information for various market analysis functions. Social media corporations,
including Facebook, permits customers to enter third-party web sites by using their current Fb login details. Nonetheless, this course may enable unauthorized risk actors/customers to carry out malicious actions along with other ID thefts and monetary frauds.

Facebook vs. Vietnam

The latest information breach in Vietnam is followed by Facebook’s information, “privateness” points with Vietnam in the past. In 2019 December, an unprotected public database with over 267 million Facebook consumer names, IDs, and speak to particulars were left online without password encryption and protection. A researcher, Bob Diachenko, confirmed that the incident occurred as a result of unethical and unlawful scrapping operations and Facebook API abuse by Vietnamese cybercriminals. In addition, the unprotected information was posted on a hacker discussion board to obtain. Earlier, in an identical leaky server incident in 2018, the social media giant leaked over millions of customers’ private information online. Such a huge database containing 419 million data of customers globally, along with over 50 million data of Vietnamese customers – demanded more advanced data protection measures.

The Vietnam federal government criticized Facebook for violating the nation’s cybersecurity
legal guidelines. The government claimed that Facebook unlawfully allowed customers to
publish anti-government feedback on the platform and failed terribly in managing their online content material, tax legal responsibility, and internet advertising.
In an identical incident, Cyble, cyber security agency, discovered hackers promoting more than 267 million Facebook data for £500 (US$623) on hacker boards and darkish web sites. Cyble claimed that the data includes information that might enable attackers to carry out SMS assaults or spear-phishing attacks to steal credentials.