KIT711: Report on a Recent Network Security Event - Facebook Breach

This report critically investigates the 2019 Facebook data breach, where hundreds of millions of user records were exposed on an Amazon cloud server due to developer negligence. The report highlights the technical flaws within the Facebook application and the lack of data protection measures, leading to significant privacy violations. It examines the role of Cultura Colectiva and the "At the Pool" app in the data leak, and the subsequent investigations and fines imposed on Facebook by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The report references key sources and emphasizes the importance of complying with data protection regulations like GDPR to secure user data and improve network security. The report also mentions the gender, location of the person, name of the user, list of friends, photos, etc. were all exposed of the Facebook users.

A news event that is relevant
to network security that has
occured in last two years

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

MAIN BODY
TOPIC: “To critically investigate on the article that hundreds of millions of Facebook users
records were exposed at the Amazon cloud server.”
Silverstein, (2019) investigated that, over 540 million Facebook users record were
unprotected and exposed to the cloud computing service at Amazon. The developers of the
Facebook application has posted all the records within plain sight. This has resulted in major
breach of the data associated with the biggest social network platform of the world. Cultura
Colectiva one of the Mexico based social media company is largely responsible for one of the
biggest leak of the data. It has exposed around 146 Gigabytes of the Facebook users data which
mainly includes ID details, account names, comment details and reactions related with the post
(Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records were exposed on Amazon cloud server, 2019).
Facebook is under the investigation of Federal criminal and it has also relatively hit the series of
several network breaches. There seems to be high degree of technical flaws within the Facebook
application. This has resulted in leakage of phone numbers. 133 million records comprise of
U.S., 18 million records of U.K. And 50 million cases of Vietnam were all Facebook based user.
Zuo, Lin and Zhang, (2019) established the fact that, Facebook tends to announce that, the
company is going to make relevant and necessary changes which is useful for protecting the
information of the individual people. This helps individuals in accessing to the data. There has
been a massive data leak which is very embarrassing for the Facebook. The gender, location of
the person, name of the user, etc. were all exposed over the internet. List of friends, photos, etc.
were all also exposed of the Facebook users. As per the Guardian report, it has been assessed that
Facebook has been playing down its impact associated with security and privacy issues. Weedon,
Nuland and Stamos, (2017) examined the fact that, The lack of data protection is one of the
major network security issue in the year 2019. Here large number of individuals has faced issues
and Facebook has faced global criticism because of lack proper protection of the data associated
with Facebook users. The cybersecurity has found 2 sets of Facebook users data associated with
the Amazon cloud servers. One is linked with Cultura Colectiva and the other one is linked with
dysfunctional Facebook app known as “At the Pool”. Patil and Shyamasundar, (2017), July said
that, The U.S. Federal commission has also imposed fine of up to $ 5billion on Facebook. This is
because of violation of the privacy of breaches and not complying with the data protection. This
one of the largest penalty which has been imposed by FTC at any information technology firm.

The Facebook must focus on complying the General data protection act in order to secure the
data of the Facebook users (Houser and Voss, 2018). The company focus on improving their
network security system and remove occurrence of such errors in the future date.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Houser, K.A. and Voss, W.G., 2018. GDPR: The end of Google and facebook or a new paradigm
in data privacy. Rich. JL & Tech.. 25. p.1.
Patil, V.T. and Shyamasundar, R.K., 2017, July. Undoing of privacy policies on Facebook.
In IFIP Annual Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy (pp. 239-255).
Springer, Cham.
Silverstein, J., 2019. Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records were exposed on Amazon
cloud server. CBS News, 4.
Weedon, J., Nuland, W. and Stamos, A., 2017. Information operations and Facebook. Retrieved
from Facebook: https://fbnewsroomus. files. wordpress. com/2017/04/facebook-and-
information-operations-v1. pdf.
Zuo, C., Lin, Z. and Zhang, Y., 2019, May. Why does your data leak? uncovering the data
leakage in cloud from mobile apps. In 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
(SP) (pp. 1296-1310). IEEE.
Online
Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records were exposed on Amazon cloud server. 2019.
[ONLINE]. Available through:<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millions-facebook-user-
records-exposed-amazon-cloud-server/>