13th November 2013
Facebook is taking precautions to protect its users it thinks may have been compromised by the recent theft of login details from Adobe. Users who share common combinations of email and password on both sites may have been affected, says the social networking site.
This highlights the importance of using different combinations of login details for the different sites you use.
Users who Facebook thinks may be compromised are being asked to answer security questions before being granted access.
More than 38 million account details were stolen in a security breach on Adobe last month. The account passwords had been encrypted, but not the usernames or password hints. This information could be used to expose the details of some account holders.
Facebook users who may be affected are greeted with an on-screen warning that their account may have been the subject of unauthorised access following the Adobe hack. It says: "Facebook was not directly affected by the incident, but your Facebook account is at risk because you were using the same password in both places. To secure your account, you'll need to answer a few questions and change your password. For your protection, no-one can see you on Facebook until you finish."
Chris Long, a member of Facebook's security team, told the BBC that the company had developed an automated process to deal with such eventualities, involving unencrypting the compromised passwords and converting them into unrecognisable strings of characters. "Through practice, we've become more efficient and effective at protecting accounts with credentials that have been leaked," he said.
