New Facebook Bug Exposed 6.8 Million Users Photos to Third-Party Apps

Facebook today quietly announced^[1]
that it discovered a new API bug in its photo-sharing system that
let 876 developers access users’ private photos which they never
shared on their timeline, including images uploaded to Marketplace
or Facebook Stories.

“When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos
on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people
share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave
developers access to other photos, such as those shared on
Marketplace or Facebook Stories,” Facebook said.

What’s worse? The bug even exposed photos that people
uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post or didn’t finish posting
it for some reason.

The flaw left users’ private data exposed for 12 days, between
September 13th and September 25th, until Facebook discovered and
fixed the security blunder on the 25th September.

“Currently, we believe this may have affected up to 6.8 million
users and up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers. The only apps
affected by this bug were ones that Facebook approved to access the
photos API and that individuals had authorized to access their
photos,” Facebook said.

Facebook also says the social media network will soon be rolling
out “tools for app developers that will allow them to determine
which people using their app might be impacted by this
bug.”

Facebook also assures its users that the company will be working
with app developers to delete copies of photos that they were not
supposed to access.

2018 has been quite a terrible year for Facebook with the social
media giant found dealing with a slew of security incidents this
year—the most significant one being the Cambridge Analytic
scandal^[2] that exposed personal
data of 87 million Facebook users.

The social network also suffered its worst-ever security breach
in September this year that exposed highly sensitive data of
14 million users^[3].

In the same month, Facebook also addressed a similar severe API
bug that was actively being exploited by unknown hackers to steal
secret access
tokens^[4] and gather personal
information for 30 million Facebook
users^[5].

In June, Facebook also suffered another security issue affecting 14
million users^[6], wherein users’ posts
that were meant to be private became public.

These security incidents came out to be a failure of the
social media giant in keeping the personal information of its
2.2 billion users protected while generating billions of dollars in
revenue from the same information.
^[7]