A couple of weeks ago two students conducting security research contacted me about a vulnerability which they believed they had found with Facebook.
Rui Wang and Zhou Li said that they had found a vulnerability which allowed malicious websites to access a Facebook user’s private data without permission. According to Rui and Zhou, it was possible for any website to impersonate other sites which had been authorised to access users’ data such as name, gender and date of birth.
Furthermore, the researchers found a way to publish content on the visiting users’ Facebook walls (under the guise of legitimate websites) – a potential way to spread malware and phishing attacks.
Here’s a YouTube video by Rui and Zhou where the vulnerability is demonstrated. (Note: there’s no sound on the video.)
When I first…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.
