Your Facebook
account can easily be hacked, it doesn’t matter how much you have applied extra
security or strong password is.
Hackers
can hack your Facebook account if they have skills to exploit the Signaling
System 7(SS7 is an international telecommunications standard and shows how
network elements in a public switched telephone network (PSTN) exchange
information over a digital signaling network. It is a telephony signaling
protocol that is being used by more than 800 telecommunication operators
worldwide to exchange information with one another, cross-carrier billing,
enabling roaming, and other features.) And the phone number of the account
holder which is verified over Facebook when the account was created.
The
weaknesses in the part of global telecom network SS7 not only let hackers and
spy agencies listen to personal phone calls and intercept SMSes on a potentially
massive scale but also let them hijack social media accounts to which you have
provided your phone number. Malicious hackers could trick SS7 into diverting
text messages as well as calls to their own devices.
Hackers
only need the target’s phone number and the details of target’s device to start
the snooping. Researchers have showed how they can hijack Bank account,
WhatsApp account, Gmail account, Facebook account i.e. all the account
associated with target’s mobile number.
Forbes
reported, SS7 has long been known to be vulnerable, despite the most advanced
encryption used by cellular networks. There are many designing
flaws in the SS7 and they have been in circulation since 2014 when the team of
researchers at German security Labs alerted the world to it.
Steps to Hack Any Facebook Account
- Attacker 1st need to open www.facebook.com and then click on the "Forget Account?" link on the homepage.
- Attacker needs to provide the legitimate phone number, when asked for the phone number or e-mail id of the account holder i.e. target account.
- Attacker will diverts the SMS containing the OTP (One Time Password) to own phone or computer by having the skills of hacking SS7.
- And then attacker can change the login password of the target's Facebook account number.
This will affect all the Facebook users who have authorized Facebook Texts and registered a number with their accounts.
"Not only the facebook, researchers show that any service i.e Gmail, Twitter. The services which are using SMS to verify its user accountscan easily be hacked by it. It has left open doors for hackers to target customer"
"Although the network operators are unable to patch the hole sometime soon there is little the smartphone users can do"
