Facebook Says 50 Million Accounts May Have Been Breached in New Attack
*By Carlo Versano*
Facebook shares dropped Friday afternoon after the company announced that 50 million accounts may have been compromised by hackers exploiting a security vulnerability.
Guy Rosen, the company's VP of product management, said the breach was discovered on Tuesday and affected its "View As" feature, which allows people to see what their own profile looks like to someone else. Rosen said the vulnerability has been patched.
"We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security," Rosen, wrote in a [blog post](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/09/security-update/) on Friday.
Facebook ($FB) discovered that unknown attackers manipulated a piece of code that allowed them to steal security tokens that usually keep accounts logged in.
The post was light on detail and was seemingly intended to show the company's efforts at transparency, just months after it was pilloried for a mishandling of the Cambridge Analytica breach.
After that scandal, CEO Mark Zuckerberg [said](https://m.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071) in a Facebook post, "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't, then we don't deserve to serve you."
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed construction to resume on a contested natural-gas pipeline that is being built through Virginia and West Virginia.
Lawyers for Donald Trump met Thursday with members of special counsel Jack Smith's team ahead of a potential indictment over the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
President Joe Biden’s son Hunter's plea deal on two tax charges fell apart on Wednesday, at least temporarily, after the federal judge hearing his case expressed concern over a related agreement on a more serious gun possession charge.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says Republican lawmakers may consider an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden over unproven claims of financial misconduct, responding to enormous GOP pressure to demonstrate support for Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.