The infamous threat actor known as IntelBroker has claimed responsibility for leaking a partial database of the Facebook Marketplace. The alleged breach, apparently conducted by another cybercriminal using the alias “algoatson” on Discord, occurred in October 2023. However, the database was only made public earlier today, on Sunday, February 11, 2024.
According to a post on Breach Forums, IntelBroker disclosed that the hack targeted a contractor responsible for managing cloud services for Facebook. The breach resulted in the theft of approximately 200,000 entries from the user database, compromising sensitive personal information.
It is worth noting that IntelBroker did not disclose the name of the allegedly targeted contractor. Facebook doesn’t utilize a single contractor company to manage all of Facebook Marketplace data. Instead, they leverage a combination of internal teams and external partnerships depending on the specific data aspect.
The compromised data includes full names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, physical IDs, and Facebook profile settings of the affected users. Hackread.com can exclusively confirm that there are 24,127 email addresses involved in the leak.
The good news is that there are not passwords involved, but the bad news is that this breach potentially exposes Facebook Marketplace users to various forms of identity theft, phishing attacks, and other malicious activities.
IntelBroker
IntelBroker, notorious for their involvement in several high-profile cyber attacks, including the leaking of sensitive US Department of Defense documents in December 2023, has a track record of breaching organizations and selling stolen data on underground forums.
Their previous exploits include the General Electric security breach, which led to the sale of DARPA-related network access in November, 2023, as well as the Weee! Grocery Service hack, where 1.1 million accounts were leaked online in Februrary 2023.
At the time of reporting, attempts to contact “algoatson” via their Discord profile were unsuccessful, as their profile was unavailable. However, efforts to establish communication with the alleged perpetrator are ongoing, and updates will be provided as the situation develops.
META, Facebook and Data Breaches
META’s Facebook has previously made headlines for cybersecurity-related concerns. In April 2021, threat actors leaked the personal data of over 500 million users from 106 countries through web data scraping.
Similarly, in December 2019, hackers exposed the data of 267 million Facebook users on a hacker forum. This breach also stemmed from scraping activities and included users’ full names and email addresses.
In December 2019, another incident occurred where a thief stole unencrypted hard drives containing sensitive data belonging to 29,000 Facebook employees. The data was stored on hard drives within computer equipment owned by a payroll worker, which had been left in the worker’s vehicle.
Nevertheless, the latest alleged leak of the partial Facebook Marketplace database is another example how persistent cybercriminals have become. Facebook, along with alleged affected users, must take immediate steps to mitigate the impact of this breach and enhance security measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.