Telegram bot sells phone numbers of 4 million Israeli Facebook users Israel today

"Bot" in the Telegram offers the numbers for sale for $ 20 per number ● Alon Gal, an Israeli security researcher, was the one who first identified the bot coming out of the "Dark Network"

• Photo: Yinon Ben-Shoshan

About 4 million Israeli phone numbers of Israelis are in malicious hands and are offered for sale on the Telegram:

this is a bot operated by an unknown party, when all you have to do is type in a user number (User ID) to get the phone number - for a fee of $ 20.

According to Motherboard magazine, the database contains information on about half a billion users from 20 countries.

This is a database that was leaked in 2019, but now the big hardware is in its accessibility and its removal from the "Darknet" (Darknet) to the general public, which any malicious person can make use of.

Alon Gal, an Israeli security researcher who discovered the bot, tweeted about the discovery and wrote, "It has become even more worrying."

In early 2020 a vulnerability that enabled seeing the phone number linked to every Facebook account was exploited, creating a database containing the information 533m users across all countries.

It was severely under-reported and today the database became much more worrisome 1/2 pic.twitter.com/ryQ5HuF1Cm

- Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) January 14, 2021

This is also a serious incident that Facebook will have to provide answers to soon, because exposure to the database can lead the wrong people to commit extortion, fraud, theft, threats and hacking through two-step verification of various accounts using the social network users' phone number.

"The issue of the threat to users' privacy has resurfaced in recent hours in light of the announcement that a telegram application bot allows users to enter a phone number to get the appropriate user's Facebook ID, or vice versa," says Etty Berger, cyber and privacy expert and CEO of Tripelp.

"This is a database of about 533 million users around the world and it is likely that it also includes information from many Israelis (phone numbers that belong to Facebook accounts up to the date of repairing Facebook's vulnerability). According to Facebook, this is an old weakness from 2019 that has been fixed so far This is reassuring because when it comes to telephone scissors, we do not tend to change them frequently, but on the contrary - continue to move them, "Berger adds.

Few days ago a user created a Telegram bot allowing users to query the database for a low fee, enabling people to find the phone numbers linked to a very large portion of Facebook accounts.

This obviously has a huge impact on privacy.

pic.twitter.com/lM1omndDET

- Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) January 14, 2021

What is the danger involved in using such a repository?

Sending fake messages and texts on behalf of other people.

"As they always say - information is worth money - here too users can buy records to reveal the full phone number. The conclusion - except in publishing non-essential information and keep in mind that any information we share can at some point also be used against us. And what is certain - no "Nothing is certain," Berger concludes.