An Instagram hack in which attackers tricked Meta’s AI help chatbot into giving them access to high-profile accounts revealed a significant weakness at the heart of the company’s ambition to automate sensitive user functions.
The attack enabled hackers to access accounts such as the dormant Obama White House page, beauty shop Sephora, and a senior US Space Force official.The Instagram hack, in which attackers persuaded Meta’s AI help chatbot to grant access to high-profile accounts, revealed a significant weakness at the heart of the company’s ambition to automate sensitive user functions.
Meta’s stumble occurs at a delicate time. The social media behemoth has doubled down on AI, cutting thousands of jobs while promising up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure. This incident may raise worries that the corporation was rushing the automation of important activities before the technology was ready to handle them securely.
Meta claimed on Monday that the problem had been rectified and that it was safeguarding impacted accounts, but the incident alarmed investors who were already concerned about the company’s significant AI spending, sending its stock down more than 5%.
Jane Wong, a security researcher and former Meta employee whose Instagram accounts were compromised, told Reuters that it took 5 to 10 minutes to recover her account. She stated in a post on X that her password had been changed without her knowledge and that she had received many requests for password resets.
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