To mitigate its part in that weak point, Facebook is now informing users if it believes they’ve been targeted by state sponsored actors.
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“Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation state”.
As this is a large scale state-sponsored attack, Facebook advises users to protect their accounts by turning on Login Approvals, so that each time someone – the user or an attacker – tries to log into the account from an unknown browser, they will also have to provide a security code that is sent to the user’s phone.
Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, has announced a new system put in place at the social network, which will send an alert to users when the company is detecting account hijacking attempts from known state-sponsored hacking organizations.
He added that such attacks “tend to be more advanced and unsafe than others”, meaning that users who are thus compromised should take great care in addressing them.
Facebook appears to be promising blanket announcements of malicious activity originating with any government’s intelligence or law enforcement agencies, saying that it hopes to “assist those people in need of protection” without giving any indication that it will, for example, warn people of attacks by Chinese authorities, but not British ones. Affected individuals are encouraged to “rebuild or replace these systems if possible”.
Facebook made clear that if a user sees this alert it does not mean that Facebook itself has been hacked, rather that it indicates that the person’s computer or smart device has been compromised and hackers are trying to access their online profiles.
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He said the company will “often” not be able to divulge how it arrived at its attribution, in order to protect “the integrity of our methods and processes”. It does say, however, that it will only use its new warning “in situations where the evidence strongly supports our conclusion”.
