Facebook Latest Hack Confirms An International Need For Blockchain Technology

Published 5 years ago on October 03, 2018

Facebook Latest Hack Confirms An International Need For Blockchain Technology

The latest news out of Facebook this week is that the social network has been subject to yet another mass data hack, one that calls into question once again the integrity of users data on Facebook. These sorts of hacks are becoming more and more common within social networks and mark very bad news for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg who are trying to make their platforms a safer place.The reality of it all is this - current technology is not strong enough to hold off hacks and attackers, the tech industry now demands a new alternative, an alternative that can be found in blockchain technology. This latest attack on Facebook confirm that there is now a worldwide need for blockchain technology to come in and secure our data online. What happened in the data hack?In excess of 50 million user account were hacked in a worm style attack, that exploited a number of vulnerabilities within Facebook. The vulnerabilities allowed the hackers to access users ‘access tokens’ a virtual token that authenticates users on Facebook. With this, the hackers could act as if they had legitimately logged into user accounts and thus were able to access huge amounts of personal data. According to CNBC, Carolyn Everson, the Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook has commented on the attack, saying that:

"This was an attack, an attack that would require people to understand three different bugs. It was an odorless, weightless intruder that walked in that Facebook could only detect once they made a certain move."

The attackers remained undetected as a result of the sophisticated nature of this style of attack. Not forgetting the fact that it was entirely down to Facebook’s own vulnerabilities too. Overall, this seems to have developed through a combination of factors, all of which now have had a devastating impact on Facebook and some 50 million users.How can blockchain technology improve this?This hack is down to flaws within the current technologies used at Facebook, flaws that simply would not exist within a blockchain model. As you know, there are already a number of blockchain based social networks such as Steemit and Mastodon. Granted, in terms of popularity these projects aren’t even close to being as big as Facebook, however traditional social media can learn a lot from the likes of Steemit. Using blockchain technology to secure the data of social media users will be the next big step that these companies need to take in order to grow and develop their platforms. Facebook are researching blockchain technology, therefore, perhaps this hack will be the last straw and that after this, Facebook will finally start taking our technology a little more seriously. References CNBC

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Robert Johnson

Robert first came across Bitcoin in 2016 during a meetup in Belgium, and has been hooked ever since. With a background in Economics, you can find Robert frequently looking at the Twitter feed of the SEC for any regulatory updates relating to Bitcoin and Crypto in general.