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Facebook Stored Millions of Instagram Passwords in Plain Text:
Facebook says it stored millions of Instagram users’ passwords in plain text, leaving them exposed to people with access to certain internal systems. The security lapse was first reported last month, but at the time, Facebook said it only happened to “tens of thousands of Instagram users,” whereas the number is now being revised up to “millions.” The issue also affected “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users” and “tens of millions of other Facebook users.”
Passwords are supposed to be stored in an encrypted format that allows websites to confirm what you’re entering without directly reading it. But as Krebs on Security first reported, various errors seem to have caused Facebook’s systems to log some passwords in plain text since as early as 2012. Facebook noticed the problem in January and said in March that the issue had been resolved.
Who could ever imagine imagine FaceBook treating users' passwords as if it were a game.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Friday April 19 2019, @12:45PM (1 child)
I was a bit surprised actually.
So far pretty much any oops at Facebook has been "Sorry we 'accidentally' abused your privacy even more than we said we would", not actual incompetence.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @05:23PM
I stand corrected.
Personally, I wasn't surprised at all, because FB has always focused on growth and above all else. This gave rise to their corporate-wide motto "move fast and break things."
In their headlong rush to monetize every single keystroke [dailymail.co.uk] and to suck up as much data as possible, with or without user consent [arstechnica.com], it was inevitable that poor security practices would creep in.
And just because this is the only recent such stupidity, doesn't mean there haven't been others, nor does it mean that there aren't others going on right now.