Facebook is suspected that attackers exploited this flaw, with the main goal of stealing personal data.
Yesterday's announcement from the company made us worried once again about whether the largest social networking site really protects our privacy.
Where was the flaw on Facebook?
The dangerous flaw was disclosed by security experts at Imperva. The flaw is related to the search, which displays the results of searches that users have made. The Facebook page used to display the results of users' searches includes iFrame elements. The vulnerability was identified by experts precisely in these elements. Hackers exploited this weakness and tried to obtain a lot of information about users.
How did this attack happen?
The attackers were able to trick users by simply visiting a specially crafted page in the users' web browser , to which the users were already logged in to their Facebook accounts. The specially crafted page contained a JavaScript code that was executed in the background when the victim clicked somewhere on the page.
Experts pointed out that mobile users are particularly vulnerable to this type of attack because it is easy for them to stay in the same browser they logged into Facebook in and forget to open another window in the background, thereby allowing attackers to extract the results they need.
The good news in this case is that the flaw was detected in time and it was not possible for hackers to collect a large amount of information about users.
