Hacking of user accounts and pages on social media is nothing new. Even high-profile personalities, including politicians and celebrities, have experienced page compromises, with scammers posting messages in their names.
However, a rare event occurred on October 6th, 2023, when Facebook users were stunned to see strange posts emanating from Facebook’s official page. What made these posts truly bizarre was their focus on criticizing the BCCI (Board of Cricket Control India) for not granting visas to Pakistani cricket fans for the ICC World Cup matches.
The highlight of this supposed prank was a post demanding the release of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, alongside another post stating, “Release Zuck.”
At 10.40 pm this post appeared on Facebook’s official page: “No idea why I suddenly have access to post stuff on Facebook. Or have I got it completely wrong and I’m not posting as Facebook UK?”
This was followed by another post that read: “Let me take this opportunity to let & know they have completely botched the event by not issuing visas to people who wanted to watch Cricket World Cup in person.”
According to reports, several posts appeared before Facebook realized the issue and responded. The social network promptly deleted all the posts and issued an official statement to notify users that the page had been compromised. Simultaneously, the platform launched an investigation into the incident and took steps to enhance the page’s security.
By 11.30 pm, Facebook’s official page was disabled. However, until then, thousands of users had seen these posts.
In February 2014, an Egyptian hacker managed to remove Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook timeline cover photo from his account using a private exploit.
We will update our readers as Facebook shares further details on this incident.
Meanwhile, take a moment to reexamine the security of your profile on social media because this incident is a reminder that no platform or organization is safe from cyberattacks. So, users must prefer strong passwords, ideally with 2FA, and avoid using the same password for different accounts.