Facebook

Facebook wants its billions of users to know it cares about beefing up security in the wake of a major security breach, and now it appears the social media giant is ready to spend some money on a major cybersecurity acquisition to make it happen.

Facebook has approached several security companies about a possible acquisition, The Information reported Sunday, citing sources described as familiar with the matter. Possible takeover targets weren't identified, but the tech news outlet said a deal could be announced as soon as the end of the year.

Mark Zuckerberg has faced a great deal of heat and backlash, moreso in recent times than ever. Many would argue that it is well-deserved, given Facebook's decidedly cavalier attitude regarding privacy and security. Ethical mishaps after ethical mishaps that the company sees on a regular basis, however, haven't had too much of an impact on Zuckerberg's position of power.

That, it appears, may be set to change all too soon.

Facebook has tentatively concluded that spammers masquerading as a digital marketing company were behind the massive security breach revealed last month, and not hackers working for a nation-state, the Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday.

The attackers who carried out the mass hack that Facebook disclosed two weeks ago obtained user account data belonging to as many as 30 million users, the social network said on Friday. Some of that data—including phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, searches, location check-ins, and the types of devices used to access the site—came from private accounts or was supposed to be restricted only to friends.

Facebook has received ample blame for the historic data breach that allowed hackers to not only take over the accounts of at least 50 million users but also access third-party websites those users logged into with Facebook. But what makes it so much worse is that fixing the issue is, in many ways, out of Facebook's hands.

Facebook reset account logins for tens of millions of accounts Friday, alongside its announcement that it found a serious security flaw had let hackers potentially control user accounts. How can you tell if you were in this breach? And, more importantly, what can you do about it?

A US District Court judge in California has ruled in favor of Facebook, denying a joint federal and state task force that tried to force the social networking company to wiretap Messenger voice calls by holding the company in contempt of court, according to a report from Reuters.

Facebook has patched a remote-code execution flaw discovered in one of its servers.

Researcher Daniel 'Blaklis' Le Gall, of SCRT Information Security, said on Friday he bagged a $5,000 bug bounty from the social network for reporting a flaw that could be exploited to execute arbitrary commands using malicious cookies.

Though remote code execution bugs are considered serious problems, Le Gall noted that no Facebook user data was ever exposed or accessed via the uncovered hole. The bug was patched this month prior to today's disclosure.

My legs were sticking to the vinyl back seat of a NYC cab when I received the email on a Thursday this July. I was running late to an afternoon dentist appointment, and sending messages on Facebook Messenger. Most of the conversations were for a story I was reporting about a Facebook group for sexual assault survivors, which had been overtaken by abusers.

The U.S. government has reportedly been trying to get Facebook to break the encryption in its Messenger app in an ongoing criminal probe so that the law enforcement agencies can listen to a suspects voice conversations. This has once again sparked the debate about whether or not companies can be forced to change the security parameters of their services to aid surveillance which would help law enforcement close ongoing cases.