Hackers accessed personal information of 30 million Facebook users

After two weeks of investigation, Facebook announced additional details on Friday of how attackers carried out a massive breach of the social network that compromised accounts for tens of millions of users.

Almost 30 million Facebook users' phone numbers and email addresses were accessed by hackers in the biggest security breach in the company's history. The attackers accessed even more details on 14 million of those users, including the area where they live, their relationship status, their religion, and part of their search history.

The hack comes as Facebook is still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which a right-wing political consulting group improperly obtained data on millions of users.

Beginning with a set of accounts controlled by the attackers, the exploit jumped from friends of those users to friends of friends, ballooning to the eventual total of 30 million accounts via an automated script. Facebook reaffirmed that third-party apps were not accessed using the stolen tokens, and that the vulnerability did not affect other services the company owns, like WhatsApp or Instagram.

It's still working with the FBI, FTC and other authorities as it investigates the breach. It will also notify the 30 million people whose access tokens were stolen, providing them with more details about what information might have been accessed and what they can do to protect themselves from suspicious contact going forward.

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