1. Facebook Timeline Hack

Sep 13, 2017 Equifax Hack: A timeline of events. Facebook; Twitter; Comments. July 29 – Equifax discovers the hack and immediately stopped the intrusion. A Palestinian security researcher hacked into Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline to demonstrate a security hole.

You may have a rogue app on your account or you may have malware on your computer responsible for the post/tagging. Warn your friends not to click on any links in the post and to remove their tags from the posts. Check the apps on your account and remove any that are suspicious.

Facebook Timeline Hack

TO REMOVE APPLICATIONS: Run a FULL scan on your computer with your anti-virus program. Many anti-virus programs will over look browser add-ons, so check the add-ons on your browser for any that appear suspicious. I recommend you disable any suspicious add-on and see if that resolves your issue, then you can decide to remove it or re-enable it. FAQ for disabling/removing add-ons for various browsers: It may also help to clear your browser history and to clear your browser cache and cookies. Here is an FAQ with links to support for various browsers/operating systems: If you use more than one browser, clean them all.

Facebook's new Timeline will make it even easier for criminals and others to mine the social network for personal information they can use to launch malicious attacks and steal passwords, a researcher said today. Timeline, which at a developer conference and plans to roll out to users in a few weeks, summarizes important past events in a one-page display. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Timeline is 'the story of your life,' That has experts at U.K.-based Sophos concerned. 'Timeline makes it a heck of a lot easier for attackers to collect information on people,' said Chet Wisniewski, a Sophos security researcher. 'It's not that the data isn't already there on Facebook, but it's currently not in an easy-to-use format.'

Cybercriminals often unearth personal details from social networking sites to craft targeted attacks, noted Wisniewski, and Timeline will make their job simpler. 'And Facebook encourages people to fill in the blanks in the Timeline,' said Wisniewski, referring to the new tool's prompting users to add details to sections that are blank. Because people often use personal information to craft passwords or the security questions that some sites and services demand answered before passwords are changed, the more someone adds to Timeline, the more they put themselves at risk, said Wisniewski.

'Remember the hack of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's account?' Asked Wisniewski. 'That hacker found the answers to her security questions online.' A former University of Tennessee student who bragged it took him just 45 minutes of research to reset Palin's Yahoo Mail account password was last year. Hackers can also use what they find on Facebook and elsewhere to craft convincing emails that include malware or links to malicious sites, noted Wisniewski, even if the individual is not the target. 'It may be about the fact that you work for RSA Security,' he said, referring to the emails sent to low-level employees at that firm earlier this year. Those emails, which included, gave attackers a foothold on RSA's network.

The criminals then scoured RSA's systems and stole confidential information about its popular SecurID authentication token technology. Others, not strictly hackers, could use Timeline to quickly dig up dirt as well, said Wisniewski. 'Someone could use it to gather information to harass you, or someone at work competing for your job could use it,' he said. 'The more you put in there to make it complete - and we've been conditioned to finish forms - the easier it is for someone with ill intent to gather information about you,' said Wisniewski. Although current Facebook privacy settings will apply to the Timeline - letting users decide who sees what - and the Timeline can be edited to remove an embarrassing past, Wisniewski was pessimistic about users' decision making. 'Call us paranoid or prudent - we're paid to worry about this - but for 99% of people, the danger doesn't even cross their mind,' said Wisniewski. In an Sophos ran on its website today, nearly 50% agreed that the Facebook Timeline worried them, while about 17% said they liked the idea or would get used to it.

Wisniewski admitted that the poll probably doesn't reflect most Facebook users' opinions. 'They're doubly self-selected,' he acknowledged, 'first for taking the survey and second because they're concerned enough about security to go to our website.' Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld.

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