{"id":4330,"date":"2019-03-21T15:17:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T19:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/?p=4330"},"modified":"2019-03-21T15:17:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T19:17:06","slug":"facebook-stored-hundreds-of-millions-of-passwords-in-plain-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/facebook-stored-hundreds-of-millions-of-passwords-in-plain-text\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of Passwords in Plain Text"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2464\" src=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod.png\" alt=\"Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of Passwords in Plain Text\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod.png 800w, https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod-300x150.png 300w, https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod-768x384.png 768w, https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod-540x270.png 540w, https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod-162x81.png 162w, https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2018\/03\/facebook-mod-360x180.png 360w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/>Today, cybersecurity blog <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/krebsonsecurity.com\/2019\/03\/facebook-stored-hundreds-of-millions-of-user-passwords-in-plain-text-for-years\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">KrebsonSecurity<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> revealed Facebook stored hundreds of millions of users\u2019 passwords in plain text. The social media giant <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/will-facebook-force-creation-u-s-national-privacy-law\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">came under fire<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> recently for numerous cybersecurity and privacy issues. The Facebook Password Problem is just the latest scandal. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"widget\"><div class=\"aside-card\">\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><p><a class=\"iam-inject\" href=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/identity-and-access-management-vendor-map-of-the-best-solutions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1682\" title=\"IAM VendorMap\" src=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/files\/2020\/02\/IM_VM_SB_800.jpg\" alt=\"Download Link to IAM Vendor Map\" width=\"800\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Krebs, Facebook administrators put no encryption on the users\u2019 passwords. Up to 20,000 Facebook employees could search through the plain text at will. Moreover, around 2,000 programmers and developers performed searches through the unhashed passwords. KrebsonSecurity stated the number of individuals affected numbered between 200 million and 600 million. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.fb.com\/news\/2019\/03\/keeping-passwords-secure\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">official blog post<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Facebook, they discovered the flaw in January during a regular security review and have since closed the vulnerability. Facebook did not confirm either the number of users affected or the number of employees with access to the plain text passwords. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, the social media giant announced plans to alert all affected individuals. Additionally, Facebook stressed no one outside the company accessed the platform nor did anyone abuse the exposed passwords; users should not need to change their passwords, although they certainly can if they desire. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><b>Best Practices From the Facebook Password Problem<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We\u2019ve written extensively on what enterprises can do <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/its-time-to-embrace-password-security-strategies\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">to improve<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> their <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/identity-management\/how-password-security-can-improve-your-cloud-identity-management\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">password security<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. However, we wanted to turn it over to Stephen Cox, Chief Security Architect of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.secureauth.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SecureAuth<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">; he summarizes the best practices takeaways from the Facebook Password Problem succinctly: <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">&#8220;The discovery is just another indication that our continued reliance on passwords is not sustainable and fails consumers. Decades of experience shows us that the password is an archaic method of authentication, often not under the control of the user, and simply isn\u2019t enough to satisfy today\u2019s threat landscape. Not only are many organizations using poor hygiene when storing passwords, but a large portion of these passwords are also already widely available on the dark web due to previous massive breaches. The reality is that people reuse passwords across multiple websites and password leaks can have far-reaching consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the trend of password leakage and the resulting credential misuse on the rise, organizations must evolve and adopt modern approaches to identity security, one that improves security posture but takes care to keep the user experience simple. We need to move beyond the password, and basic two-factor authentication methods, to modern adaptive risk-based approaches that leverage real-time metadata and threat detection techniques to improve end-user trust. The goal should be rendering stolen credentials useless to an attacker.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you to Stephen Cox of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.secureauth.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SecureAuth<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for his time and expertise!<\/span><\/p>\n<br \/>Widget not in any sidebars<br \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, cybersecurity blog KrebsonSecurity revealed Facebook stored hundreds of millions of users\u2019 passwords in plain text. The social media giant came under fire recently for numerous cybersecurity and privacy issues. The Facebook Password Problem is just the latest scandal. \u00a0\u00a0 According to Krebs, Facebook administrators put no encryption on the users\u2019 passwords. Up to 20,000 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":2464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[142,125,16,112,14,299,1108,62,76,118,145,30,91,90],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of Passwords in Plain Text<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"KrebsonSecurity revealed Facebook stored hundreds of millions of users\u2019 passwords in plain text. 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